


The Shepherd's Lost

by aphreal



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Death, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Gen, Universe Alteration, apocalyptic, multiple character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-31 01:04:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3958609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphreal/pseuds/aphreal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Mark is received by a young Templar guarding the Divine who is utterly unprepared to lead, the Inquisition fails. Badly. With no one to stop it, the apocalyptic future glimpsed in Redcliffe comes to pass. </p><p>After the Herald’s death, the remnants of the Inquisition, led by Cullen and Cassandra, join forces with the rebel Grey Wardens at Vigil’s Keep, led by Nathaniel and the Warden-Queen of Ferelden. Their combined search for a way to seal the Breach and stop Corypheus leads them to Redcliffe and a solution no one expected. </p><p>But when the world has gone this far wrong, how many sacrifices will it take to set things right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2015 Dragon Age Big Bang. 
> 
> I was fortunate enough to receive art from the talented and sweet RaelynnMarie, which you can see here:  
> http://becausethatswhatido.tumblr.com/post/119169312764/dragon-age-bb-collaboration-to-be-updated-with
> 
> Thanks as always to my phenomenal beta Cherie for helping me wrestle this story into shape and for giving me wonderful ideas, even if I did terrible, awful things with them. 
> 
> The title is taken from The Dawn Will Come, as sung after the fall of Haven.

Nathaniel rolled his neck to stretch out the cramps from sitting so long hunched over his desk during yet another session of working late into the night. 

It seemed unfair, really. He ought to have less paperwork to do, given the current lack of oversight. And in truth, he did have fewer reports to prepare and send off. Instead of a reprieve, however, that seemed to have resulted in a trade-off. Fewer reports to write, but more information to sort through. 

Everything had gotten more complicated since the empress was assassinated, both in Ferelden and in Orlais. He could only imagine the Anderfels must be faring no better, given the recent resounding silence from Weisshaupt. 

So instead of moving along a clear path forwards, Nathaniel spent his days – and far too much of his nights – poring over scouting reports and trying to discern his duty in the face of conflicting sets of orders, neither of which came from his official superiors. 

At least handling all of the details gave him something concrete to focus on. The minutiae helped to drown out the strains of the Song that nagged at the edges of his mind almost constantly now. 

“Hey, commander, I figured I’d find you here.” 

Nathaniel looked up at Sigrun’s greeting, finding the dwarf lounging in his doorway and looking nearly as tired as he felt. “Where else?” 

“Never moving from that desk makes you easy to find with messages in the middle of the night, at least.” Sigrun shrugged. “You have an unannounced guest. Should I show her in?” 

Nathaniel felt his eyebrows rise in surprise. An unexpected visitor at this hour must have a compelling reason. 

“Please do. A visitor sounds like a welcome distraction from all of this.” He gestured vaguely at the papers spread across his desk. 

“If you say so.” Sigrun’s expression under the dark tattoos remained flat and uncharacteristically unamused as she beckoned to the unseen woman in the hallway then left the other way. 

Even with that warning, the figure that appeared in the doorway caught him off guard, despite – or perhaps because of – her familiarity. She wore the same battered armor, years more wear etched into the blue and silver enamel since he’d seen it last, and greeted him with the same weary smile, achingly familiar even after all this time. Alexia Cousland. 

He should have expected her from Sigrun’s flat tone. Many of the other Grey Wardens at Vigil’s Keep resented their former Warden Commander for abandoning them so abruptly. Sigrun had taken it particularly badly, likely because she suspected the reasons for Alexia’s sudden departure, even if she would never know the full truth about the night that had nearly destroyed the royal marriage. 

Alexia hadn’t returned to Vigil’s Keep since turning the arling and command of the Wardens over to Nathaniel after her return to Denerim. And now she stood in the doorway to his office with no warning or explanation, as if no time at all had passed. 

Except for the wariness in her eyes. The concern was well hidden but there to someone who knew her well enough. He had hesitated too long, made her fear for her welcome. 

Nathaniel pushed back from his desk and rose, crossing the room in five quick strides to fold her into a hug. She stiffened, caught off guard by his gesture like her sudden appearance had startled him. After a moment, Alexia relaxed, bringing her arms up around him, her touch gentle despite the plate of her armor. 

“Nate.” Her voice echoed with relief as her head sagged briefly against his shoulder. 

“Lex.” He smiled faintly at the exchange of childhood nicknames the rest of the world had forgotten. 

After a long moment, she straightened and pulled back, her face set in the focused guise of the Hero of Ferelden, Warden-Commander and Queen, rather than the open expressions of his longtime friend. “You got my message?” 

“Such as it was.” Nathaniel responded with a tight smile of amusement, returning to his desk and gesturing for her to take a seat opposite him. He pulled the paper in question out from one of the piles, the once tightly folded parchment smoothed almost completely flat from the weight of his other papers. Glancing again at the familiar script, he recalled its brief text. _The Wardens are in danger. Call in all patrols. Fortify the Vigil. Disregard all orders from Clarel. Please, trust me._ Nathaniel looked back up at her. “But I didn’t expect you along with it.” 

“Sorry.” Alexia ran one gauntleted hand over her hair in a borrowed gesture. “I needed to explain. To make sure you were all safe.” 

Nathaniel nodded. “I’ve done as you asked. The Fereldan Wardens have been called in to Vigil’s Keep. They’re getting on each other’s nerves constantly but safe from whatever further madness is happening in Orlais.” 

Relief flickered across her face before she frowned again, one concern replaced by another. “Have you all been hearing the Calling?” 

“That’s one thing Clarel got right, yes.” 

“There’s more going on than she knows.” Alexia’s lips pressed together. “I need to speak to Avernus.” 

Nathaniel frowned. “He’s still at Soldier’s Peak. It would take more than holes in the sky with demons pouring out of them to pry that man out of his tower.” 

“Send for him. He’ll come for me or I’ll go pry him out myself, and he knows it.” She smiled with grim amusement for a moment before sighing. “Tell him I need to consult with Thedas’s foremost expert on the Taint. Something has gone very wrong, and I need his help.” 

“I’ll dispatch a message in the morning.” Nathaniel made a note on one of the numerous task lists on his desk. 

Alexia drew a breath that hitched audibly. Nathaniel looked up to see her mouth twitch as she chewed on the inside of her lip. “You don’t need to mention any of this to Denerim.” 

Nathaniel offered no comment beyond a quirk of one eyebrow, making a second note beside the first one. That could be dealt with in the morning, as well. 

\---------

Alexia paced the battlements at Vigil’s Keep, restless and impatient. How long could it take for a messenger to travel to Soldier’s Peak and return, even slowed to Avernus’s pace? She’d been waiting for over a week, and her patience steadily eroded with the delay. 

If forced to be honest, she’d have to admit that her discomfort came from more than impatience. Given all of the time she’d spent here during her years as Warden Commander, returning to Vigil’s Keep ought to have felt like a homecoming. 

But it didn’t. Alexia found herself uneasy within the Vigil, unsettled by more than the nagging strains of music she could almost hear. The Warden fortress felt familiar yet disturbingly not. Every time she began to feel at ease, to slip into the comfortable routines of the past, she turned a corner in a well known corridor and met a stranger in a Warden uniform. 

Once she had known every soul that lived in the Vigil, Warden and servant alike. Now she walked through a sea of strangers, largely by choice; strangers were preferable to friends turned distant. Sigrun, Velanna, even Oghren. When they looked at her now, she didn’t see the familiarity of a shared past; they regarded her with mixed curiosity and hostility. No one asked why she had resigned her post, but the question filled their silences. 

Everything about being at the Vigil felt strange, a distorted echo of her past. Nate ran the Wardens now, Warden-Commander in his own right rather than her trusted lieutenant. She had no official role, inspiring a confused deference from servants and recruits alike. This time, as she stood on the battlements, looking longingly towards the southeast, the daily letters home remained unsent by choice. 

Putting those thoughts firmly from her mind, she paused in her restless pacing of the walls and stared instead to the southwest, as if she could see a single bird across the leagues of sky. While her rational sense told her it was too soon to expect Avernus’s arrival from Soldier’s Peak, the lack of communication from Haven couldn’t be so easily explained. In her last message, Alexia had given Leliana the information that Vigil’s Keep would be her next destination. She should have received a report by now. The bard-turned-spymistress had been unfailingly punctual in keeping her apprised of Warden activity across Orlais and Ferelden since she had left Denerim. This sudden silence could only stem from some new disaster. As if they hadn’t already weathered enough of those in recent months. 

Alexia peered out across the grey, foreboding sky one final time before she gave up and returned to the warmth of rooms that held too many memories and little comfort. A dark speck stood out against the clouds, and she blinked to clear her vision of this product of wishful thinking. But the object remained, resolving into a raven as it drew closer, its inky wings spread to carve the winds that pulled at Alexia’s hair and cloak. Feeling a sudden surge of hope, Alexia lifted one gauntleted arm to offer the bird a perch. In a fluttering of dark wings, it gratefully accepted, landing smoothly on her forearm and holding out one leg to have a message tube removed, croaking impatiently. 

Once the cylinder was untied from its leg, the bird quieted, ruffling its feathers and hunkering down on her arm as if it were a more permanent roost. “Hey now, none of that.” Alexia chided the bird with a hint of a smile. “Let’s take you inside where you can rest from your journey and I can see what urgent news you brought me.” 

Walking through the Vigil with a large bird on her arm drew strange looks, but Alexia found the open staring more comfortable than the furtive glances she normally received from young Wardens awestruck by her reputation. Arriving in her temporary quarters, Alexia coaxed the raven from her arm onto a windowsill and took the message scroll to her small desk. 

As soon as she slipped the thin sheets of paper free from the leather tube, Alexia received confirmation that her earlier fears had been well founded. While the sealed roll of paper bore the code name Leliana used for her – Laurel, the family reference meant either as kindness or an odd joke – it was written in an unfamiliar hand, elegant calligraphy rather than Leliana’s small, efficient strokes. The raven was most certainly one of Leliana’s, but the message it carried hadn’t come from her. 

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Alexia broke the seal, scattering wax carelessly across her desk, and read the message. 

_I apologize most sincerely for the delay in correspondence. It required time, patience, and no small amount of injured fingers to tame the bird to a new mistress. I am sorry to bear ill news, but as you must have deduced by this point, Nightingale is unable to communicate directly with her agents at present. She has been captured by Venatori forces in western Ferelden, and her current condition is unknown. We deeply miss her warmth and considerable skill, but in spite of this loss, her work must continue. As a colleague who shared a portion of her training and background, I shall attempt to fill her role as a point of contact for her network. As was Nightingale’s custom, I shall provide you with reports of Grey Warden activity in Orlais and southern Ferelden, information that you may use however you see fit to advance our mutual goals. I would deeply appreciate any information you can offer in return about events in the Fereldan Northlands._  
With deep regards,  
Lady Josephine Montilyet 

Despite this contact’s questionable wisdom in signing covert documents with her actual name, the information she provided in the following pages was thorough and, so far as Alexia could tell from the reports Nate shared, accurate. In addition to details about the continuing unusual Grey Warden activity under Clarel’s command, Lady Montilyet reported an alarming increase in demon activity in regions with high Grey Warden presence. Alexia had been aware of Clarel making insane deals with that Tevinter mage, but the extent of the consequences staggered her. Maker’s blood, what had the woman done with the lives trusted to her? Having no formal training in magic, Alexia could only imagine the level of power required to summon and control demons on that scale. And she didn’t want to think about where that power must be coming from. Another problem to set before Avernus when he arrived. 

Shaken, Alexia set the reports down on her desk and allowed her eyes to scan back over the letter that accompanied them. Leliana, captured by the Venatori. Alexia had no illusions about what that mild phrase meant. The bard was likely dead or worse. The news struck an unexpected blow. She hadn’t seen Leliana in years, Alexia too busy trying to hold her kingdom together, while Leliana was occupied serving as the Divine’s eyes and ears. But even so, Leliana remained a friend, one who had been loyal through some of the worst times they had faced. Alexia found it hard to imagine Thedas without Leliana sitting somewhere reading reports and making notations in cryptic codes, a raven perched on the back of her chair. The mental image blurred, replaced by a view of her imprisoned and restrained, bloody and bruised, sparkling eyes dulled with horrors. 

Shuddering, Alexia shoved the thought aside. She needed to be practical, focused on the tasks at hand. There was nothing she could do for Leliana, but she could help ensure that her friend’s legacy and work did not end with her. Drawing a fresh sheet of thin, expensive paper from a drawer in her desk, Alexia sharpened a quill to pen a message back to her new contact, hoping she could trust this Lady Montilyet. 

\---------

After three more days of pacing the Vigil restlessly, Alexia’s fraying patience was rewarded. She stood with Nathaniel at the head of the stairs to the main hall as the Soldier’s Peak contingent arrived, a mass of Wardens in blue and grey flooding through the main gate to fill the central courtyard with far more troops than she had expected for the remaining skeletal garrison called in from the other stronghold. 

Eyebrow raised, she glanced over at Nate. “Have you been padding the rolls with an army you decided not to disclose to the crown?” 

“I may have been.” He shrugged casually. “There’s a family tradition of treason, after all. I have a legacy to uphold.” 

Alexia blinked, staring as his lips slowly quirked into the hint of a grin. Nate’s humor always seemed to come at unexpected moments, startling but all the more welcome for its rarity. 

Before she could formulate an appropriate response, he continued. “As it happens, they aren’t all from Soldier’s Peak. My scouts report that the group met with other Wardens on the road, those looking for an alternative to Clarel’s madness. The officers took the liberty of inviting them to join us.” 

“Any ‘deserters’ from Clarel’s forces are more than welcome. I can only wish we were able to get more of them.” Alexia frowned grimly as she stared over the troops in the courtyard, their numbers suddenly seeming small if they represented the total remnants of free Grey Wardens in Ferelden and Orlais. 

Now that she looked more closely, the Wardens’ disparate origins became obvious in the variety of uniforms on display, the Orlesian armor and moustaches mixed in with solid Ferelden stock. One dark-bearded man in outdated armor felt odd to her Warden Sense, but not nearly as strange as the robed mage coming through the gate with the rearguard. 

Alexia breathed a sigh of relief to see Avernus at last. As much as she might hold misgivings about the man’s morals and motives, she trusted him to have knowledge that would be sorely needed in the present circumstances. 

The gates thudded closed behind the newly arrived Wardens, containing the large mass of troops within the Vigil’s courtyard. The sheer number of Wardens concentrated so closely together pressed uncomfortably against Alexia’s heightened Warden Sense, an added pressure competing with the Song that scraped along the periphery of her thoughts. Trying to contain her wince, Alexia opted for a strategic retreat. 

Turning to the seneschal – a new one, not Varel, but a capable man in his own right – she instructed him to see the new arrivals settled and then send Avernus to her. Alexia pretended not to notice the way the man looked to Nate for confirmation of her orders before nodding assent, another subtle reminder that she had no authority here, that it had been years since she had held command of this garrison. 

Feeling suddenly weary and older, Alexia left the courtyard for the comfortable dimmer light of the corridors, wondering if she would have time to rest and let her headache pass before needing to engage in a duel of wits with the devious mage she’d asked to meet with. 

\---------

Nathaniel stomped his boots as he entered the main hall, clouds of dust from the training fields scattering off his feet. After only a week, the veteran officers had made a remarkable start at integrating the scattered Wardens into a combined force. It would be more encouraging if he had a solid idea of who or what his troops would be expected to face in the coming days. Demons, blood mages, Templars gone mad… The only thing he could safely say was that there didn’t appear to be another Blight on the horizon, Maker be thanked for small mercies. 

As his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light of the hall, he caught sight of Alexia’s blond head next to Avernus’s bald one, both bent over a table covered in papers. Not surprising. He had scarcely seen Alexia out of the wizened mage’s company in the week since the man had arrived from Soldier’s Peak. When she had arrived asking for Avernus, Nathaniel hadn’t expected her focus to be quite so single-minded, although in retrospect, perhaps he should have. He’d had years to become acquainted with Alexia’s iron determination. 

Nathaniel strode towards the table the pair was huddled over. As he got closer, the papers strewn across the wooden surface were revealed as maps of Ferelden and Orlais, each sheet focused in on a particular arling, bannorn, or duchy. Peering curiously, he noticed fresh notations added to the maps, marks scrawled across them almost like the nautical charts he remembered seeing on his father’s desk when he was a boy. Avernus’s tiny scrawled notations provided little information he could decipher, but those in Alexia’s hand recorded dates and times, tracking the progress of something. Given Alexia’s insistence on speaking specifically with Avernus and the Song constantly nagging at all of the Wardens in the Vigil, it wasn’t hard to guess what progression the maps traced. 

At this range, Nathaniel could make out the conversation at the table as well as the details of their notations. 

“So there was no one in the north experiencing this false Calling until after I sent my message?” Alexia sounded concerned. 

“According to the information I gleaned in my interviews, it appears not.” Avernus remained unruffled, driven by dispassionate academic curiosity as always. “I would like clearer mapping, however.” He frowned and poked at a single notation on the Storm Coast. 

“If we ignore that anomaly…” Alexia glanced meaningfully at Nathaniel, startling him; he hadn’t realized she had been aware of his approach. “We’re seeing a definite pattern of spread.” 

Avernus nodded. “Almost like a contagion.” 

Alexia’s lips compressed into a grim line, but Nathaniel caught a glint of satisfaction in her eyes as well, like the mage had confirmed an unpleasant suspicion. “What do you need to verify that?” 

“Blood samples, of course.” The eager curl to Avernus’s lips sent a shudder down Nathaniel’s spine. “Preferably from individuals who would have been at different stages of Taint progression before the disruption of recent events. Also a varying duration of exposure to the contagion-induced Calling.” 

Nathaniel expected Alexia to protest, to shut down Avernus’s blood research like she had every other time he’d asked for leave to resume his experiments. Instead, he watched with growing unease as she joined the mage in sorting through their notations to compile a list of subjects most likely to provide useful information, making plans to collect the blood samples they would need. This, more than anything else, reinforced just how deeply the widespread Calling had shaken Alexia – and how desperate she was to stop it at any cost. 

Of course, he should have come to this chilling realization sooner. Why else would she have brought in Avernus if she wasn’t seeking his specific, disturbing expertise? 

\---------

The following afternoon, Nathaniel managed to catch Alexia’s “anomaly” in the training yard, where he was working with some of the younger Wardens. The bearded man’s gruff voice drilled them in efficient, practiced patterns, suggesting a military background that imparted greater discipline than most Wardens brought into the order. 

The veteran in his worn armor had first caught Nathaniel’s attention during Avernus’s interview. Immediately after speaking with Alexia upon his arrival from Soldier’s Peak, the mage had begun questioning every Warden in the Vigil about their recent whereabouts and experience of the Calling. Nathaniel had quit listening to the interviews after the first dozen repetitions of the same questions to different people, but Avernus’s raised voice had been hard to miss in this particular case as the man’s evasive answers frustrated the mage to the point of shouting. They had also raised questions for Nathaniel, ones that led him to consult with Alexia later. She confirmed his growing suspicions, seemingly unconcerned by the situation, dismissing it as generally irrelevant in the larger picture. 

Nathaniel, however, wasn’t content to let things rest so easily. He lingered in the training yard until the recruits had been dismissed, then approached to stand casually by as the man straightened up the practice equipment. Nathaniel received a brief nod somewhere between acknowledgement and greeting. 

He returned the gesture and let the companionable silence settle for a moment before speaking, his tone carefully neutral. “The Grey Wardens get few volunteers, but we see even fewer imposters.” 

The other man froze for a heartbeat, his momentary panic quickly covered by a gruff denial. 

Nathaniel spoke over him. “Alexia says you’re not a Warden. The rest of us could miss it, especially with the added clamor of the crowd and the Calling. We’re generally better at Sensing darkspawn than other Wardens, anyway, but Alexia’s always had a talent. And now that she brought you to my attention, it’s clear that she’s right.” 

The man straightened with a sigh of relief. How long had he been coping with the strain of hiding and lying? 

“I do consider myself a Warden, in a way.” He met Nathaniel’s gaze with no evasion or reticence. “I was Conscripted but never properly Joined.” 

Nathaniel held his eyes for a long moment, gauging the other’s sincerity. Finally, he nodded decisively. “I suspect there’s a story behind that. Perhaps you’ll tell me about it one day. For now, I have a more important question: Can I trust you at my back as a brother in arms?” 

“Without question, commander.” The answer came immediately and without reservation. “The world is going to the Void, and your people are the only ones trying to stop it. I’d be honored to stand at your side.” A tiny, grim smile showed in his forest of beard. “I’ve been living as a Grey Warden for years. There’s no shame in dying as one now if it comes to that.” 

“We’ll be glad to have you.” Letting his own smile broaden, Nathaniel held out a hand that was caught in a firm grasp. “You’re good with those recruits.” 

That drew a dusty soft chuckle. “I’ve trained my share of young soldiers over the years.” 

“If we’re going to have a chance of pulling this rabble into a strong force, we’ll need those skills.” He released the handclasp. “What’s your name, Warden?” 

“You can call me Blackwall.” 

\-----------

Nathaniel tossed his quill down on his desk in frustration. The shouting from down the hall had begun drowning out even the Song, and between the two he couldn’t even begin to focus on reviewing scouting reports. Pushing back from the desk, he strode briskly into the corridor, where the shouting resolved into words. 

“Don’t tell me that! You have to know something from all of this.” 

“Maybe I could tell you more if I had my lab. It’s your fault, dragging me out here where I’m near blind.” 

“You’d rather have stayed there, hiding out alone in your tower until the Red Templars and Venatori came for you?” 

“Cultists and lyrium-addled meat shields, pah. They would have posed little threat. I’ve held out against worse monsters before.” 

“Because none of them were actively trying to get in! And I’m sure sitting there trapped for an age was such a wonderful experience that you’re eager to repeat it.” 

The heated argument propelled Nathaniel’s feet as he marched down the hallway towards the workroom Avernus had been given as a makeshift lab. Reaching the door, he could finally see the gestures and postures accompanying the words. 

Avernus shouted and waved his arms wildly, face red with exertion. Even from this distance, Nathaniel recognized his posturing as bluster, anger born out of fear. Finding himself helpless in the face of this threat must be a novel and horrifying experience for someone who had studied the subject for so long. 

Alexia had never dealt well with being powerless, either. Her gestures tended more towards clenched hands and lunges restrained into violent twitches of her arms and torso, but Nathaniel knew her well enough to understand these signs of tension. Avernus’s failure to provide answers only sharpened Alexia’s desperation, and her rigid control was rapidly fraying under the strain. 

“Enough!” Nathaniel entered the room, drawing both of their attention and putting a halt to the argument, at least for the moment. Ignoring Alexia – he could offer her even less in the way of answers than Avernus had provided – he focused on the mage. “If you want to lay blame for your relocation, place it on me. I would have called the remaining garrison from Soldier’s Peak in soon, regardless of Alexia’s request. With Redcliffe falling to the enemy, Ferelden is in grave danger of being overrun. The only two safe places in the country are Fort Drakon and Vigil’s Keep. I intend to hold the Vigil against all comers for as long as I am able, and I need every possible resource that will help to do so.” 

Alexia’s jaw clenched tight as he mentioned her nation’s dire plight. Nathaniel couldn’t be certain whether she was fighting to hold in further violent words or tears she refused to shed in public. Giving her head a small shake, she spoke in a flat, bitter tone that Nathaniel barely recognized as her voice. “I’ve been stupid; it doesn’t matter. Maybe Clarel’s right. If there’s nothing we can do to fight this Calling, we should deal with the repercussions rather than wasting what little time we have left railing against the inevitable.” 

“No, I cannot accept that.” Avernus’s brows lowered. “This synchronized Calling is not natural; it can’t be. Multiple Wardens in varying stages of the Taint, experiencing Calling all at once. It defies logic. I have studied the Taint for most of two ages, and I can say with firm certainty this is not how it functions.” 

“So you’ve said. Many times.” Alexia’s momentary restraint vanished under a fresh surge of frustrated anger. “But that doesn’t give me any information I can act on. Knowing this is wrong does nothing to help me fix it. Tell me something useful!” 

“Commander?” 

Nathaniel turned gratefully in response to the voice from behind him, glad for a reprieve from his unwelcome role as marshal of the verbal lists. He nodded acknowledgment and greeting to the woman who had addressed him, a young Warden who had, until recently, been stationed at Soldier’s Peak. His command had gotten too big; he’d begun forgetting names. But he knew with certainty the woman was a scout, likely bringing him news too urgent to wait for the daily dispatches. “Report.” 

“There’s an armed force approaching the Vigil, ser.” 

Urgent news, indeed. Alexia and Avernus could put their argument aside, perhaps indefinitely. 

“The Red Templars?” Nathaniel couldn’t imagine how such a sizeable and unsubtle force had taken them unawares, but he knew with gut-wrenching certainty that his troops were not ready to face them. Still, if the enemy came, what choice did they have but to meet the assault and hold as best they were able. 

The scout cut off his contingency plans with a quick shake of her head. “No, commander. A smaller force and not prepared for a siege. They carry some kind of Chantry banner, but not one I recognize.” 

Thanking the woman for her report, Nathaniel dashed towards the battlements. He needed to see for himself this unknown force approaching his fortress. Familiar footsteps echoing along behind told him Alexia had the same idea, following on his heels. 

Reaching the top of the walls over the main gate, Nathaniel looked out to see precisely what the scout had described: a small military force approaching, on foot and with no heavy siege weaponry. They lacked even supply wagons. This battalion was scarcely prepared for a forced march, never mind a prolonged siege. They proudly and openly bore a heraldic banner, an eye superimposed over the Chantry sun, backed by a down-pointing sword. Nathaniel frowned at the unfamiliar symbol, wondering what sort of religious splinter group he was about to have at his door. 

Alexia took a position at his side, her approach delayed by the encumbrance of her habitual heavy mail. She matched his position, staring out at the approaching troops. Her breath caught in a startled gasp. 

“You know their device?” 

She nodded. “I’ve seen it on letters I received. These are Leliana’s people, the last remnants of those loyal to the late Divine and her cause of restoring peace and order. We’ve just been joined by the Inquisition.”


	2. Chapter 2

Alexia walked with Nate as they descended from the battlements at a more sedate pace than the frantic rush that had carried them up the stairs. They arrived in the main courtyard just as the gates swung ponderously open to admit their guests. A tall woman in Seeker armor with dark, severe hair passed across the threshold first, raking her gaze across the Keep as her voice rang through the courtyard. “Who is in charge here?” 

Nate took a step forward, meeting her discerning gaze. “I command this garrison. Warden-Commander Nathaniel Howe.” As always, the habitual pause to see who reacted to his surname, who would judge him for his family. The Seeker merely nodded, acknowledgment between equals, and he continued. “What brings the Inquisition to Vigil’s Keep?” 

A second woman stepped forward at the Seeker’s left hand. Her dark skin marked her as likely Antivan, and her silk shirt had clearly never been intended for wear during a forced march, its sagging puffed sleeves stained with dirt and sweat. Her expression, however, showed no signs of strain or weariness, a serene smile of greeting as if they stood in a perfumed Orlesian salon. “Lady Josephine Montilyet, Ambassador for the Inquisition. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Warden-Commander, and we are most grateful for your willingness to meet with us under such circumstances. As to why we are here, the Inquisition seeks shelter for our forces, in return for which we offer an alliance and the support of said forces for pursuit of shared goals.” 

“Such as restoring some semblance of sanity?” 

Nate’s dry question earned a wider smile and brisk nod. “Quite so, Commander. I know our unannounced arrival may be concerning, especially as you have only our word for our intentions. If it would set your mind at ease, there should be someone among your Wardens who can vouch for me. I have been corresponding with a Grey Warden who was part of Sister Nightingale’s contact network. Although…” She gave an embarrassed little cough. “I am afraid I must admit I do not know her true name.” 

Alexia stepped forward. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person, Lady Montilyet.” She smiled at the diplomat’s carefully concealed relief. “You may continue to call me Laurel, if you like, but most people here know me as Alexia.” 

The ambassador’s eyebrows twitched upwards in surprised recognition, but she said nothing.

Alexia felt a surge of gratitude that the woman had chosen to respect her unstated wish for anonymity. “As for vouching for you to the Commander, I’ve already done so. You can’t think the Grey Wardens open their fortress gates to any armed force that wanders by.” 

Lady Montilyet chuckled politely. “Of course not, and we are truly grateful for your trust.” 

“I must ask, however, what brings you here _now_?” Alexia repeated Nate’s earlier question, refusing to allow the ambassador to slip out of giving a thorough answer. “Perhaps a raven got lost, but I didn’t receive a message suggesting we should expect a visit. And why in such numbers? Negotiating an alliance, as you suggest, is a worthy goal but should hardly require your full force.” 

“We had no choice. Haven has been overrun.” The Seeker, tired of diplomatic pleasantries on the heels of a forced march, provided a blunt answer. “Our former base of operations has been claimed by forces belonging to the Venatori and Red Templars. We needed to come somewhere we might have hopes of a welcome. They do not appear to have followed us. Yet.” 

“Venatori and Red Templar combined.” Nate latched on to that detail. “Then the rumors are true that the two groups are allied?” 

“It appears they serve a common master, yes.” The Seeker’s severe face drew into a stern frown. 

Looking around at the soldiers and civilians arrayed behind the leaders of the Inquisition, Alexia saw signs of exhaustion everywhere, warriors nearly ready to drop their shields and artisans swaying where they stood. She placed a hand on Nate’s arm to draw his attention. “The details can wait a few hours at least. These people have come a long way, and they need to rest. Let them bring their troops inside secure fortifications so they can rest easily.” 

His eyes flicked over the crowd, taking in the details Alexia had noticed. “Of course. Ambassador, please provide my seneschal with your most immediate needs, and we’ll accommodate your people as well as we are able.” 

\----------

Two hours later, the Inquisition complement had settled into Vigil’s Keep, the fortress suddenly bulging at the seams. Alexia joined the leaders of the varying forces gathered in the main hall. Given the size of the group, Nate’s office had quickly been ruled out as too small, but they could all gather comfortably around the rarely-used officer’s table in the hall. In addition to Lady Montilyet, the Inquisition was led by the Seeker, Cassandra Pentaghast, and a military commander Alexia recognized but wasn’t able to place immediately. It wasn’t until the ambassador introduced Commander Cullen that she recalled that name belonging to a much younger man in templar armor. 

Remembering his impassioned calls for Annulment at Kinloch Hold, she frowned suspiciously. Did the Inquisition know who they had entrusted with the command of their troops? “Commander? No other title, _ser_?” 

His eyes narrowed, then widened briefly in recognition. He regained control almost immediately, offering her a challenging stare. “That’s right, _Warden_.” 

So much for anonymity. Alexia couldn’t explain why she’d avoided giving her titles to the newcomers, but there was something comforting about standing in Nate’s shadow, passing on the responsibility for making decisions when she couldn’t trust her own judgment. 

Lady Montilyet made a brief moue, her eyes flicking between Alexia and the Inquisition’s commander, likely wondering about the protocol for addressing an incognito monarch. Alexia cast Nate a meaningful look, silently asking him to cover for her, just for a little bit longer. His eyebrow raised in curiosity, but he smoothly cut in to introduce the officers he’d brought to the table: Velanna, Sigrun, and the commander from Soldier’s Peak. Alexia herself he passed over with a vague reference to the Inquisition leaders having already met her at the gate. That seemed to pass for now, but she doubted she could get by with it for long. 

But she wasn’t the only one attempting to escape formal notice. Two individuals who had arrived with the Inquisition leaders had managed to avoid introductions entirely. A ruddy-cheeked beardless dwarf lurked around the edges of the gathering, observing keenly but saying nothing. The other, an olive-skinned Tevinter mage with a thin, dark moustache, had been swept off by Avernus on sight for Maker knew what purpose. 

As the head of the resident force, Nate took lead of the conversation once the introductions, however incomplete, were finished. “Commander, explain what exactly happened at Haven and how you escaped the attack. How certain are you that you weren’t followed?” 

“Our scouts reported no signs of pursuit. The enemy forces appeared more interested in holding Haven than exterminating us.” Cullen’s scarred lip twisted in distaste. “We didn’t escape; they let us go.” 

Cassandra added a grim postscript. “Because we no longer have anything they want.” 

Cullen grimaced, looking down at the table for a moment before rallying to continue. “We were taken by surprise by a large coalition of Venatori and Red Templars.” He gave Nate a wry smile before continuing dryly. “I can definitively confirm the rumor that those two have joined forces.” 

Nate frowned. “We would have been hard pressed to hold against either group separately. Together… Do you have an estimate of their numbers?” 

“Not a specific one, I’m afraid. We were too busy getting our people out to take an accurate head count.” Cullen’s voice held a note of reproach, although Alexia couldn’t be certain if he disapproved of the question or his inability to answer it. 

“Their force was massive.” Josephine tried to fill the gap. “It blanketed the entire valley pass leading to Haven.” 

Remembering the location, Alexia tried to picture the army that would be required to achieve that feat and felt the blood drain from her face as even her roughest estimates yielded unthinkable totals. 

“That was only what they sent to take Haven.” Cullen’s admission made the picture even grimmer. “We have no way of knowing if they have additional forces in reserve. But I doubt they stripped their garrison from Redcliffe, at the very least. They would be fools not to hold it now that they have it.” 

Alexia clenched her teeth, trying vainly not to think about a Tevinter cult occupying Ferelden’s key stronghold, corrupting Teagan’s home and the site of Alistair’s childhood. Maker have pity on the idiot enchanters who had signed that deal, because she certainly wouldn’t if she were ever to find them. 

“We are not coming as empty-handed beggars requesting your protection.” Cassandra interjected, a note of urgency in her voice. “We offer you a full alliance and access to all of the Inquisition’s resources. Such as they are.” She faltered at the end, honesty overcoming her forced optimism. 

Cullen nodded. “Our troops are at your disposal. We’ll have a better estimate of our current strength once I’m able to confirm casualties and get reports from the healers. It was not an easy march, and it came on the heels of a rout. Not all of our soldiers will be in fighting form.” 

Nate glanced to Velanna, who gave a curt nod in response. “I’ve already arranged for our healers to assist their efforts.” 

Cullen offered grateful thanks, apparently untroubled at taking aid from an obvious mage. Perhaps the man Alexia remembered from Kinloch had learned nuance in the ensuing decade. 

“Our assets are not purely military.” Josephine spoke next, looking up from a notation on the clipboard she held close to her chest. “I have access to Leliana’s information network, as well as my own contacts among Thedas’s nobility. Although my standing with many of them may be less respected as ambassador for what will be seen as a failed Inquisition.” 

“If you think a title would help you be taken seriously, what would you like?” Alexia shrugged. The woman had already figured out who she was, and the others would catch on soon enough, especially with Cullen’s suspicious eyes on her; she might as well offer the information on her own terms. “I don’t have a spare arling to bestow unless Nate’s tired of his, but I should be able to manage nearly anything else. Between us, though, don’t take the available bannorn; you don’t want the headaches that go with its politics.” 

Josephine laughed politely. “Such a generous offer. I am in your debt.”

Cassandra huffed in amusement. “I shouldn’t be surprised, given Leliana’s history, that her Grey Warden contact has the ear of the crown.” 

“Not just his ear.” Oghren chortled, having somehow insinuated himself into the gathering. 

Sigrun snickered loudly, and Nate failed to entirely hide his grin. Velanna merely pursed her lips. Cullen… if she wasn’t mistaken, Cullen snorted to conceal a laugh. Definitely not the man she remembered from Kinloch. 

The Seeker’s eyes widened as she took in the various reactions, and she bowed her head with a contrite expression. “Forgive me, your majesty. I should have realized sooner.” 

Alexia smiled warmly, waving aside the apology. “There was no reason for you to know. I’m not exactly at my most regal. To be honest, I’m here unofficially and as a Warden, not a queen.” Alexia bit the inside of her lip before continuing, weighing her words. “I’m also largely incognito. Ambassador, I would ask you to avoid mentioning my presence here to any of your contacts. Especially those in Denerim.” 

Alexia kept her attention on Lady Montilyet, pointedly ignoring Sigrun’s suspicious frown and Nate’s narrowed eyes. There were larger matters at hand; they’d let it pass. 

After a long moment, they did. Alexia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, as Nate resumed questioning the Inquisition leaders about their forces, capabilities, and information. 

\----------

Avernus and the Tevinter mage, introduced as Dorian Pavus of Minrathus, joined the group a while later, the latter bringing unsettling news. 

“I’ve been able to gain information from within the Venatori cult. I know some of their plans. Their utterly and totally insane plans.” His lip curled into an elegant sneer of distaste. “The Venatori – and presumably the Red Templars, as well – are not acting of their own initiative. They serve someone they refer to as the Elder One, a being known as Corypheus.” 

Alexia frowned, scanning the table to see if that name meant more to anyone else than it did to her. 

“Shit, that’s not possible.” Muttered swearing drew her attention to the dwarf who had been lurking unobtrusively for long enough that she had nearly forgotten he was there. “It can’t be Corypheus. We killed that talking darkspawn bastard.” 

Nate grimaced. “Take it from a Grey Warden, darkspawn aware enough to keep names have a tendency towards not staying dead.” 

“Damn…” The dwarf sighed, shaking his head. “I think it’s time to call in some help.” Muttering, he left the hall without another word. 

“That was marvelously cryptic.” Dorian’s feigned brightness filled the ensuing silence. “Perhaps he’ll enlighten us later, do you think?” 

“He’d better.” Cassandra glared darkly at the door the dwarf had departed through. 

“Speaking of secrets and rumors…” Avernus joined the conversation, looking eagerly at the Inquisition leaders. “Is it true you possess the ability to close rifts?” 

Cullen’s face shuttered, jaw clenching hard. It was Cassandra who answered, her tone bitter. “Not any longer. Ser Hugh, the Herald of Andraste, has gone to the Maker’s side.” 

“We’re very sorry to hear of your loss.” Alexia stepped in quickly with condolences, not willing to trust whatever response Avernus might have offered, focused on the magic rather than the person. “Was that the purpose of the enemy’s attack on Haven?” 

“No, he was dead before then.” Cullen’s voice was flat and his eyes hard. “Although Corypheus might not have known that. Either way, it wasn’t the enemy who killed him. It was the Mark and the blighted lyrium.” 

An elf stepped from the shadows, and Alexia started. Unlike the beardless dwarf, she hadn’t even seen this man earlier, had no idea he was here. She studied him suspiciously, noting his mage’s staff and unmarked face, as well as an air of calm and superiority that suggested a lifelong apostate rather than an escapee freed from a Circle. 

He commanded the conversation effortlessly. “The Herald bore residual magic from the artifact that created the Breach. It is what allowed him to close the rifts. Unfortunately, it clashed dangerously with the lyrium that had infused his system during his training as a templar. We did all we could to limit the harm, but ultimately the magics proved incompatible. Fatally so.” 

Avernus’s eyes lit with curiosity, but as he opened his mouth to ask what would doubtless be an insensitive academic question about unknown, risky magic, Nate smoothly cut him off, offering further condolences and directing the conversation firmly back towards practical matters of supplies and troop coordination. 

\---------

Given the number of mages, former templars, and a Seeker, the integration of the Inquisition forces into Vigil’s Keep had Nathaniel starting to feel less like he was running a Warden post and more like he’d taken responsibility for a Circle of Magi. At the very least, it had become apparent that the Vigil was an active war camp. The main hall’s traditional after dinner card games had been replaced by intent discussions of military strategy and magical theory. Nathaniel was currently sitting with Alexia, Cullen, and Cassandra attempting the former, but their conversation had been almost entirely drowned out by a vocal example of the latter taking place further down the table. 

Dorian’s insistent voice rose briefly over the general noise. “I still say the Herald’s mark wasn’t the only possible way to close rifts.” 

“The Herald had a direct and unique connection to the rifts.” Solas didn’t need to raise his voice to command attention. “His Mark was tied to the artifact that caused the Breach. That cannot be replicated through other means.” 

“But that is not the only way to manipulate the Fade.” Dorian refused to be deterred, matching the elf’s arrogant certainty with his own. “The Venatori are fully capable of opening rifts, even without such a Mark or artifact. They appear to be using a variant of a spell designed by my former master.” 

“Were you a slave in Tevinter?” Nathaniel had rarely heard Velanna speak with such a degree of compassion. 

“Of course not.” Dorian huffed a brief sigh of disdain. “That’s all you southerners know about the Imperium. We’re not all slaves and blood mages, you realize. So contrary to your naïve assumptions, I am not, nor have I ever been, either.” 

Velanna’s voice regained its usual icy bite. “What I _know_ is that someone referring to a master has been owned.” 

Dorian laughed. “I meant master in an academic sense. I wasn’t his slave; I was his apprentice. The latter are generally treated better.” 

“Your master is with the Venatori now?” Avernus, clearly bored by the history lesson, dragged the conversation back from its digression. 

“Sadly, yes.” The levity left Dorian’s voice. “He joined their cult in search of the impossible. But his research may have led to the spell or ritual that allows the Venatori to manipulate rifts. So clearly such a thing is possible.” The last remark was pointedly directed at Solas. 

The elf merely shook his head, unimpressed. “There is a vast difference between tearing open a channel to the Fade and closing one. Just as it is always easier to destroy than to mend.” 

Nathaniel missed whatever reply the Tevinter made, lost in the echoing bang of the hall door slamming open. Even if he hadn’t known most of the troops in the hall, he could have identified the Inquisition forces based on the heads turning at the sudden sound. The Wardens in attendance didn’t even look up, used to a certain level of disruption. 

“Why did I have to hear from the Warden Commander that my wife is back in the country?” 

That got attention from the Wardens, one in particular. 

Alexia’s head snapped up, her face going pale. Nathaniel could see wariness and longing warring in her eyes as she turned towards the door. “Alistair!” 

Spotting her, Alistair stalked across the hall, ignoring everyone else as he fixed her with a heated glare. Muscles in his cheek twitched as he clenched his jaw. 

Alexia scrambled to her feet gracelessly. “You shouldn’t be here.” She tried to back away from his approach, drawing up short as her escape was blocked by a bench that hit across the back of her legs. 

“Did you think maybe I could decide where I ought to be?” Despite the crowd, Alistair’s eyes never wavered as he threaded his way between the tables to reach her. “I can make decisions for myself. I make decisions for a lot of people, as it happens. Someone decided I was responsible enough to be in charge of a whole country, even.” 

“No, it’s not safe. You don’t understand.” Alexia shook her head, eyes pained. “The Wardens here, we’re all—” 

“Hearing an early Calling?” 

Alexia’s eyes widened. “How did you…” 

“Because so am I. Since well before I got the letter that you were.” His voice lowered as he reached a normal speaking distance, and the anger in his face softened. “Wardens who’ve been through a Blight don’t live long after, and we’ve had a decade. I thought it was just my time.” 

Alexia trembled where she stood, and Nathaniel could see tears collecting in her eyes. 

Alistair took a final step, closing the distance to stand a handsbreath from her. “I’ve been going out of my mind trying to do this without you.” 

“Maker, I’m sorry.” Alexia collapsed against him, wrapping her arms around his neck, her voice reduced to a ragged whisper that barely carried. “I thought I was keeping you safe.” 

Alistair’s arms came around her, and he bowed his head, cradling her against his chest. 

Even as close as he was, Nathaniel couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, the words muffled by Alexia’s face buried against her husband’s collar and his lips brushing her hair. But the desperate way they clung to one another said everything. 

Nathaniel noted with mild surprise that it no longer hurt to watch. 

“I thought she ordered you not to contact Denerim.” Cassandra’s observation held a note of question. 

Nathaniel shrugged. “Grey Wardens operate outside of normal laws; we’re not subject to any crown. And within the Wardens, she’s not in my chain of command.” He watched with a faint smile as Alexia’s shoulders shook with a weak laugh. “Also, I’ve known her long enough to get away with doing what she needs rather than what she asks for.” 

“What _she_ needs, clearly. Does the mission benefit?” 

“We’re going to need those two in the coming days, both of them at their best. With this blighted Calling in everyone’s heads, and worse for Wardens who were active during the Blight, they’re useless apart right now. But together…” He grinned tightly. “There’s a reason the Fifth Blight was the shortest on record.” 

Alexia had always been a controlled person; she would hate having this audience for a reunion that ought to be private. Nathaniel could pull at least some of the attention elsewhere. “Pavus, how much do you know about this Venatori rift manipulation? Keep in mind that you’re explaining it to a marksman, not a magister.” 

That worked, starting back up the mages’ debate that had been interrupted by Alistair’s arrival. Dorian’s ensuing explanation proved incomprehensible to anyone besides Solas and Avernus – and Nathaniel suspected Avernus of faking at points. Partway through, Alexia caught his eye with a questioning look, and he gave her a quick nod. Nathaniel concealed his smile as the king and queen of Ferelden quietly slipped away like errant children escaping from lessons. 

\-------

Alexia rested with her head pillowed on her husband’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and breathing. They’d been apart far too long, and she hadn’t realized how much she needed this simple closeness. 

This hadn’t been her intention when they left the hall, though. She’d only wanted to move somewhere private where she could offer an explanation and potentially resume their argument without the audience. Alexia had only been planning a conversation, but once they reached her guest quarters, it had become clear that Alistair had other ideas. She couldn’t say that she’d minded in the least, but the strains of discordant music intruding into her calm relaxation proved they couldn’t put off the discussion forever. 

Sighing, she broached the subject. “Avernus says this isn’t right.” 

“I don’t recall asking him.” The chest under her cheek vibrated with a soft chuckle. “We’ve been married for nearly ten years. I can take my wife to bed in the afternoon if I want to.” 

Alexia lifted her head to glare at him fondly, placing a light kiss on his unrepentant smirk. “Not that. This.” She tapped at the side of her head where the music felt loudest, trusting that he would understand. 

Alistair frowned, drawing her more firmly against him. “Nope, I’m not thinking about that right now. I’d rather focus on you.” 

She nestled her head back onto his shoulder, cuddling against his warmth and breathing the familiar scent of his skin. But the Song persisted, a nagging reminder this peace could be ever so fleeting. “Varric – the Champion’s dwarf biographer from Kirkwall, apparently you met him briefly? Anyway, he says there’s a darkspawn behind all of this. Pulling the strings on the Venatori and Red Templars, as well as Clarel, most likely. He’s called Corypheus, a talking, intelligent darkspawn, like the Architect.” 

“No darkspawn in bed. I make very few rules in this marriage, but I’m going to be firm on that one.” 

Alexia rolled her eyes, even knowing he couldn’t see the gesture. “I wasn’t planning on inviting him.” 

“Then I don’t care right now.” 

Alexia pursed her lips at his stubborn refusal, torn between fond exasperation and the urge to thump him over the head until he started being reasonable. Loving him won out, at least for now. 

That didn’t mean she’d let the subject drop, though. “But if he’s manipulating the Taint somehow, affecting Wardens’ minds…” 

“Lexia, stop.” The strain in his voice drew her attention immediately. Alexia lifted her head again to see his face drawn and eyes intense, pleading. “Can we save the world again later? I’d like to be selfish for a little while and have a few hours with my wife when I don’t have to share her with an entire kingdom.” 

“I’m sorry, love.” She relented immediately, stroking her fingers over his face to smooth away the tension lines. “It must seem…” Sighing, she smiled sadly. “I’ve been so focused on stopping this before it took you from me.” 

Alistair brushed a lock of hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “We’re both here now. Can’t that be enough?” 

Leaning down to kiss him, she thought that it might. At least for today. 

\---------

Nathaniel had been pleasantly surprised by the number of trained archers among the Inquisition forces. Until the first time he had them drill with the Warden archers and discovered a serious discrepancy in style between the two groups. Since then, he had begun devoting a portion of his time to training the new archers personally, drilling them until new habits replaced the old. After several days, he thought they were making progress towards integrating the units. While he tested a select group of the Inquisition’s best archers working with a few Wardens, a runner interrupted the training session, bringing news of a Warden approaching the gate. 

Nathaniel delegated the training session to a lieutenant and strode briskly towards the front gates to investigate. Every Grey Warden he could think of who had escaped Clarel’s clutches already resided within the Vigil. Except one. But he refused to give into that line of wishful thinking. If his yearning for her caused her to materialize at his gate, she would have been here long ago. It seemed far more likely that the Orlesian Warden-Commander had sent a representative to chastise the wayward Fereldan outpost. Given everything he’d heard about Clarel’s increasingly erratic behavior, he would need to be on his guard. 

Nathaniel reached the courtyard at the same time as Varric, and the dwarf’s expectant grin replaced his concern with startling hope. Had she truly come after all? 

It seemed that she had. The postern gate swung open, and two women walked in side by side. 

The taller wore massive armor and carried a greatsword slung across her back that rivaled Alexia’s favorite blade. Varric met the Champion halfway across the courtyard with a broad grin. She stooped down for a fierce hug that seemed to catch him by surprise. When she pulled back, he studied her face for a long moment. “Blondie?” 

“Not coming.” 

Varric winced, but anything he might have said next withered under Hawke’s stern glare, her steely gaze deterring sympathy. 

Nathaniel’s eyes, however, were drawn inexorably to the younger sister, slender and dressed in Warden blues. The months since he’d seen her felt like years, and he couldn’t stop staring, trying to guess how she’d spent that time away. Bethany looked weary, her pale skin almost ashen with fatigue, but she stood straight-backed and unafraid. He felt a surge of relief at seeing her well, and a swelling of pride at her indomitable spirit. The world might be going to the Void, but Bethany Hawke remained defiantly undaunted.

Until he saw her standing here and felt his knees buckle with gratitude, Nathaniel hadn’t realized how much he’d been worried for her, the concern carefully locked away with all of the other feelings he wasn’t supposed to have. The last message he’d received from Bethany – sent hastily and privately, tucked away in a hidden drawer in his desk, a rare tangible piece of evidence in this covert relationship – had said her sister was taking her away from the Wardens to somewhere secure to wait out the worst of the repercussions from the Conclave disaster. While it drove Nathaniel mad not knowing where she had gone, if she was safe, he had clung to the knowledge that Bethany had at least been spared getting caught up in Clarel’s madness. It wasn’t much comfort, but it had given him some small reassurance during her long absence from his life.

And now she was here, finally, standing in the Vigil’s courtyard, her eyes shadowed and hair tangled, but whole and well and safe. He could scarcely believe it. 

“Go kiss her already, you big coward.” 

Nathaniel tore his gaze away from Bethany to look down at Sigrun. He’d given up years ago on wondering how she always managed to appear and interfere in his life at critical moments. “It’s not about fear.” He pitched his muttered response to carry only to its intended audience. “It’s a matter of propriety. It isn’t appropriate for a commander to have this sort of attachment to a subordinate.” 

Sigrun scoffed, rolling her eyes. “It’s only a problem if it affects your command. If you show special favor, treat her differently than the rest of us. Which you never have for _her_.” 

He deliberately ignored the implication, refusing to restart an argument long buried. 

“Go on.” Shrugging, Sigrun continued, her tone softening as she grinned and nudged him with an elbow. “We give up enough in this job. Why refuse the little happinesses you can find along the way?” 

He looked back at Bethany thoughtfully. She met his gaze, her expression wary but hopeful. Always before, he would return a faint smile, an unspoken promise that they would find time later, she would nod, accepting that his responsibilities came before her, and that disappointment in her eyes would deepen, the hurt she tried not to show. He could see it now, could always see it, no matter how much he pretended not to. And it tore at his heart, knowing he had put it there. That wary look, more than Sigrun’s words, decided it for him. Propriety be damned, the woman he loved shouldn’t have to look at him like a mabari pup afraid to wag its tail for fear of a scolding. 

He smiled slowly, taking a step towards her. “Bethany.” Her name came out as nearly a caress, and she shivered as if she could feel it. 

“Nathaniel.” Her response sounded proper, but the curve to her lips and twinkle in her eyes gave it a coy, teasing edge. 

She held a hand out to him as he approached. He took it, her fingers warm and tingling with suppressed elemental magic, but he could no longer be content with so little. Keeping hold of her hand, he drew her in the rest of the way towards him, smiling at the surprise that brightened her face. Slipping his other hand along her jaw, he caressed her cheek, feeling the smooth skin and the tiny raised scars left behind by magical healing. She gasped at the unexpected touch, her eyelids fluttering closed. Unable to resist, he leaned in to close the distance between them, bringing his mouth to hers. 

Feeling her lips against his, her fingers reaching up to twine in his hair, her presence here became finally, fully real. Bethany was safe and here and his, and he felt a tension leave him, letting go of the pain of too many nights spent alone and worrying while telling himself it was wrong to care so much. 

“About time!” Sigrun’s whoop of approval broke the moment, and he felt Bethany’s soft laugh on his mouth before she pulled back to rest her forehead against his. 

“Damn...” Varric’s soft mutter was clearly intended to be heard. “Someone’s been holding out on a story. Looks like I’m not going to get any answers from them, though. Care to fill in some details, Sparrow?” 

Sigrun giggled, delighted by Varric’s habit of referring to her as a tiny bird. “Most definitely. Find me later, when the commander is busy and won’t hear us talking about him.”


	3. Chapter 3

Hawke had been back in his life for less than a month, and sure enough, the amount of crazy shit in Varric’s life had gone through the roof.

The level of crazy might be approaching a new high this time; even Hawke would have balked at invading a fortified keep full of crazed mage cultists with only a four-person strike force. Of course, Hawke would have used the front door and come in swinging. Instead, Varric – along with a rebel Tevinter mage and two dwarf Grey Wardens – had snuck into Redcliffe Castle to steal spell research notes from a Magister, using a secret tunnel they learned about from Fereldan royalty.

Honestly, he couldn’t make this shit up. He’d never be able to use any of it in his books because the whole thing sounded so far-fetched. This particular adventure probably wouldn’t even earn him any free drinks because no one would believe a word of it. He’d have been pretty skeptical himself if he weren’t living through the insanity personally.

Against all sense, though, nothing had gone wrong yet. The ruined windmill had been right where the royals said it would be, and Sparrow had cheerily unearthed the trapdoor and cleared out the debris blocking the tunnel, chattering all the while about how shoddy the obstruction was. Once they’d gotten into the Castle proper, Sparkler took over, his inside knowledge helping them slip past most of the patrols and avoid heavily occupied areas. Any guards they couldn’t avoid got quietly put down by a shot from Bianca or a quick cut with one of Sparrow’s daggers. And when none of that worked and they had to do things the loud, messy way… Well, that’s what the walking stereotype was for. 

Varric hadn’t been particularly impressed by the red-haired dwarven Warden at first. The man embodied every joke surfacers had ever told about his people -- and a few more on top of that. He drank, he smelled, he leered, he braided his facial hair, and he carried around a giant battleaxe that he cooed over like a puppy. Even Bianca got put off by the way that man babied his weapon. 

But now that he’d seen that pampered axe in action -- hacking through Venatori zealots with an arc of bright red blood trailing through the air after it -- Varric had to admit he was impressed. Mostly in a Maker’s-balls-I’m-glad-that-maniac-is-on-our-side sort of way. But impressed nonetheless. 

They had a few close calls, of course. What kind of improbable story would it be without dramatic tension? 

The halls here made Varric uneasy, veins of glowing red lyrium seeping through the cracks in the masonry like luminescent blood. Other than passing on stern warnings not to touch the stuff, he did his best to ignore its creepy presence. But he’d be lying if he said he succeeded entirely. 

That distraction was Varric’s only possible excuse for a Venatori patrol catching them off guard. A trio of cultists had turned the corner in front of them with no warning. A combination of their shock and Bianca’s hair trigger had kept the situation from getting out of hand, the furthest Venatori dropping to the ground gurgling with an arrow in his throat. That broke the others from their paralysis, but too late. Sparrow’s daggers and Sparkler’s magic put the remaining two down before they could flee to sound the general alarm. 

As Varric tucked the last body away in a side room, Sparrow snorted, gasping, and clapped her hands over her mouth to contain a fit of giggles. 

“What’s so funny? Something get under the mage’s skirts again?” The berserker’s dirty chuckle only set her off more.

Varric smirked. “Any time you want to let the rest of us in on the joke, Sparrow, feel free.”

“I’m sure we could all use the levity, although perhaps not somewhere quite so exposed.” Sparkler glanced down a side passage, then led them quickly into a small room to regroup.

The berserker followed along, axe at the ready as he chortled to himself. “Exposed…”

Once they got into the quiet of the room, Sparrow finally regained control of herself, giggles resolving into a bright, cheeky grin. “I was just picturing, if that cultist had gotten away, how crazy he would sound trying to tell people the castle was under attack by a group of dwarves that mysteriously tunneled in through the walls.”

Sparkler put a hand to his chest in mock pain. “I refuse to believe that even the most insane of Venatori zealots might mistake me for a dwarf.”

Varric shook his head with a smirk. “Can we all agree that Sparkler’s far too tall, pretty, and sparkly to be a dwarf?” 

Sparrow nodded with a grin, and the berserker chortled. 

“That’s settled, then.” Varric gestured towards the corridor. “Now, about that whole mission we came to daringly risk our lives for?”

“Quite.” Sparkler scanned appraisingly over the group, the corners of his mouth drawn slightly down as the levity seeped away. “Shall we go get what we came for?”

That accomplishment turned out to be easier than it had any right to be.

Sparkler led them on a roundabout route through the castle, ending up at Magister Alexius’s private study. The two Wardens watched the door, while Varric joined Sparkler in rifling through the piles of papers covering every flat surface. Varric had no idea what he was looking at on most of them, but at least he could eliminate the personal correspondence and household accounts. The rest he pulled aside as potentially useful research notes. Fortunately, the magister’s former apprentice knew enough to recognize the information they were after.

“Aha! Here we are.” Sparkler held a folio up with a dramatic flourish.

Varric exhaled with relief. “Good. I was starting to worry we’d have to fit most of a library onto a horse to get all of this back to Amaranthine and sort it out there.”

“I’m deeply insulted that you doubted me.” Sparkler tucked the papers away in his robes. “Well, we have what we came for, so I see no reason to tarry any longer and wait for anyone to stumble over the charming surprises we’ve tucked away throughout the keep. Are we clear to go?”

Sparrow nodded from where she was crouched by the door, peering out. “One of them just went by, so we should have a window before the next guard patrol comes through.”

“Splendid. I say we take advantage of it. After you.” Sparkler gestured for the Wardens to precede him.

But that’s where it all started to go wrong, as the berserker decided to dig in his heels. “We’re not leaving yet. You, pretty boy, where do they keep the prisoners around here? The important ones.”

“You want to go after Nightingale.” Varric groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. He should have seen this coming.

“She’s worth the risk. And she deserves better than being left here.” The warrior’s bushy eyebrows lowered as he glared firmly at his companions, intently serious for once.

Sparkler frowned. “Most prisoners would be kept in the cells, but we went past those on our way in without any sign of her. The Venatori must be holding her somewhere else for… interrogation.”

Sparrow snorted. “Torture, you mean. If she’s a friend, we can’t leave her to that. I’m with Oghren. Let’s pick her up on our way out.”

“Because a prison break is exactly the thing to tack onto an afternoon of light larceny.” Varric sighed but followed along. Because as he’d learned time and time again, sounding crazy didn’t always make a plan wrong.

Despite Varric’s expectations, freeing the Inquisition’s spymaster proved to be nearly as simple as Sparrow’s flippant description had suggested. The handful of cultists in Nightingale’s holding room never saw them coming. Until the berserker charged them with his axe and a bellow of fury that should have drawn every Venatori in the wing. Fortunately the room had been soundproofed, probably to let the more delicate members of the cult ignore what happened behind closed doors. So all Varric had to do was latch the door shut, and the berserker was free to hack his giant axe into the Venatori in the room. Guards, torturers, or researchers carrying out twisted experiments, whatever reason they had to be in this room, one look at Nightingale convinced Varric they deserved everything they got at the hands of a furious berserker.

Varric had seen a lot of ugly things in his time, most of them in Kirkwall, but what those cultists had done to Nightingale earned a place near the top of the list. She hung slack from rusted chains that pulled her arms at unnatural angles. The smile that spread across her ruined face at the sight of them only twisted the sunken cheeks and greying skin into something more horrifying. Not to mention the gleam in her eyes as she studied the gory messes that used to be her captors.

Varric worked his picks in the locks on her shackles, trying not to look too closely at the scars, scabs, and fresh wounds that covered Nightingale’s too-thin arms like a mosaic. Given the shape she was in and how long she’d been held here, he wouldn’t have laid odds on her being able to stand up without the chains supporting her. But once he got her down and gave her some water, she rallied, insisting she could walk and that they were wasting time to make good their escape. She even managed to find a bow somewhere, her ragged lips curling into a grim smile at the feel of it in her hands.

That was where their luck ran out, though.

Maybe someone had found one of the bodies and gotten suspicious. Maybe they’d run across a patrol Sparkler hadn’t been expecting. Or maybe fate just had a sick sense of humor. Regardless, everything fell apart when they left the wing where Nightingale had been held. Following their planned route, Sparrow narrowly avoided leading them straight into a large a group of Venatori, too many for them to take out quickly and quietly. They backtracked, and Sparkler tried another path with dismally similar results. Muttering Tevene curses that would have done Broody proud, the mage tried a final option, a route he’d hoped to avoid that involved cutting through a central hub, a gathering area with walkways and paths leading off in multiple directions. Too much activity, too hard to control. It was an admitted long shot, but they were running out of options.

Trying it proved to be a mistake. Not only was the hub full of Venatori mages and zealots, but one of them spotted the intruders and raised the alarm. Freed of the need for secrecy, Sparkler let loose with some of his more dramatic spells, and the crazy dwarf went into full-throated berserker mode. Varric would have criticized his lack of subtlety, but the more of the enemy that were watching the crazy, howling dwarven warrior, the fewer who would think to look for the source of the arrows their buddies had just sprouted.

“Dorian,” Nightingale called through a lull in the battle, “what was your plan for getting out of this hall? Surely you had a contingency.”

“My _plan_ ,” the mage’s words dripped with condescension, “involved being nowhere near this part of the fortress. We came to obtain Alexius’s research notes on opening and, Maker willing, closing rifts. Your emancipation was, I regret to inform you, something of an afterthought.”

“You endangered the Inquisition’s chance to close the Breach for me?” Her eyes widened in horror, head shaking. “I’m not worth that. No one is. You should have left me and taken the research notes to Haven.”

“After everything we’ve been through – darkspawn and werewolves and politics – you think I’d leave you to be tortured by a bunch of skirt-wearing Tevinter freaks?” The berserker snorted. 

“Well, see if this ‘skirt-wearing Tevinter freak’ uses his magic to aid you any longer.” Sparkler’s actions belied his offended tone as he shot a focused tongue of flame to scatter the cultists closing in on the dwarf. 

The berserker gave a low, dirty-sounding chuckle that could have been apology, thanks, or something else entirely, as he bisected the closest Venatori zealot, that giant axe cutting through the man’s armor like it was made from Rivaini silk.

Nightingale’s arrows feathered another of their opponents, one of the few not smoldering. “I am touched by your loyalty, but truly, freeing me was not worth the risk.” 

“At the moment, the matter is academic. What’s done is done, and we have no way to turn back the sands of time to do it differently.” Sparkler summoned up a rather gruesome spirit from one of the mangled corpses, scattering the rest of the cultists’ lackeys as they fled from their former comrade. “That won’t hold them off for long Might I suggest we focus our efforts on getting out of the current predicament? I’ll be happy to assign blame later from a comfortable chair beside a fireplace.”

“If you can get out of the castle, do you have an escape plan from there?” Nightingale’s face had taken on the unfocused look it got when she was moving people around in her head like game pieces, playing chess without a board.

“Harding’s waiting with mounts. Unless she and her people are having as bad a time of it as we are, the way out should be clear.” Varric supplied the answer. “Which won’t do anyone a damned bit of good if we can’t get out of this deathtrap.”

“That hallway leads to a servant’s gate that should be sparsely guarded.” Nightingale pointed with a drawn arrow towards a small passageway on the other side of the open hall, down a level from the walkway they’d entered into.

“And you know this how?” Sparkler’s eyebrow arched in elegant skepticism.

“I didn’t spend all of my time chained in that cell. Whenever they dragged me out of it, I did my best to remember where I went and how to get back there, should I ever have need and opportunity.” She shrugged. “It provided a welcome diversion.”

Varric shook his head in amazement. “If you can find us a way out, Nightingale, that ‘diversion’ may save all of our lives.”

“Not all.” She waved her hand sharply in firm negation. “There will be more than simply servants down that passageway, and you cannot afford to be caught between those patrols and pursuing forces from the rest of the keep.”

“Wrong pronoun. Try ‘we’, not ‘you’.”

“No, Varric.” Her smile managed to be both sad and serene, a mockery of beauty on that ravaged, skeletal face. “I can’t keep the pace you’ll need to get clear, and those documents take priority. I’ll cover your retreat for as long as I’m able. It might buy the rest of you sufficient time to get away.”

“Not alone, you won’t.” The berserker stomped over to her side. “That flimsy elf-sticker of yours couldn’t hold off my pebble of a nephew without some help from a real weapon.” He hefted his axe meaningfully. As the bard started to protest, he cut her off. “Mage stuff takes priority, you said. That doesn’t just go for your life; it goes for all of us. Leather armor and sissy robes let the rest of them run faster than the real, metal stuff. I’d slow ‘em up as much as you would.” A fierce grin split his scruffy, red beard. “Besides, I’m not going to run from a fight. Not one this big.”

“If we’re going, now’s the time.” Sparrow drew their attention from where she’d been scouting the various passageways leading off the room. Varric had nearly forgotten her presence entirely, like she really was some kind of tattooed dwarven ghost who could vanish at will. “The zealots are coming back, and it sounds like they’re bringing friends. I barred the door, but it won’t hold long if they’re determined.”

“We have a plan, then?” Nightingale raked them imperiously with her gaze, defying argument.

Sparkler looked like he wanted to protest, but then he deflated, shoulders sagging. “Agreed.”

Throat suddenly too tight to speak, Varric nodded his assent as well.

They hurried across the open space to the passageway Nightingale had indicated, feeling horribly exposed. Varric kept waiting for an arrow or a lance of magic to spear between his shoulder blades, but they reached the door without incident, Sparrow meeting them there. Varric paused, still reluctant to abandon any of his comrades.

Seeing his hesitation, Nightingale smiled, placing a hand on his arm. “Thank you, my friends, for giving me the chance to die with a bow in my hand, standing free and unchained. It is a blessing more than I have hoped for in a long time.”

He swallowed hard, looking into her sapphire eyes and remembering the woman he’d known before they turned her into this. “Make ‘em pay, Nightingale.”

Her answering smile rivaled the berserker’s for ferocity, and Varric almost pitied the cultists that would face the pair of them, a wave breaking bloodily against an unexpected rock. Then her sleeve fell back, revealing burn marks and patches of raw skin, and Varric knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that these bastards would deserve whatever they got. And then some.

The dull thudding of metal on wood echoed through the chamber as the cultists hacked at the barred door. The sound shattered the frozen, liminal moment, sending them all into action. Nightingale and the berserker took up positions in the mouth of the passageway where they had both cover and room to move, and where their opponents would be forced to come a few at a time.

With a final glance over his shoulder, Varric followed Sparkler and Sparrow down the hallway that would lead them out of the castle. He tried to curb his fertile imagination when the screams and clash of combat began drifting from behind them them a few minutes later. Knowing what was happening in general would be enough; he didn’t need to picture the details. Not that he could stop himself.

As Nightingale had predicted, they met guards on the way out. Varric and Sparrow disposed of the startled patrols as easily as the first few they’d encountered on their way to Alexius’s study, giving their mission a particularly futile sort of symmetry. As the servants’ side door slammed shut behind them, Varric inhaled a lungful of clean, night air. He and Sparkler clung to the wall like ivy while Sparrow scouted out a bit, getting their bearings. After a moment, she beckoned, and they followed, trusting her to lead them to where Harding waited with the mounts.

They’d gotten out with what they’d come for, but Varric couldn’t celebrate the victory. Those research notes had better be worth what they’d cost.

\---------

Cullen paced around the grounds of Vigil’s Keep, feeling restless and caged. Having his world bounded by stone walls usually provided a familiar sense of security, but recently they had become confining. Maker’s blood, but he hated feeling useless. He wasn’t sure how long he could continue spending his days training troops for an unclear purpose while waiting for mages he barely knew to dictate his strategy going forward. At first, he’d tried to confine his frustrated pacing to his quarters, but the quiet weighed on him too heavily. Sitting alone allowed him too much time to think, to dwell on his failures. If he remained there much longer, he feared he’d begin punching the walls. Better to explain restless prowling around the grounds than broken fingers. 

The archery range usually stood empty in between mandatory drills, few of the troops in residence choosing shooting as recreation. Cullen’s meandering had already taken him past the Warden-Commander and seneschal engaged in an inventory of the Keep’s stores, making sure the supplies were sufficient to weather a prolonged siege with its current increased population. Knowing that Nathaniel was occupied elsewhere, the familiar twang of a bowstring and thunk of arrows hitting straw bales drew his attention. 

Rounding the corner to the archery range, he caught sight of a lone female archer, her face covered with Dalish tattoos, their brown lines only a shade darker than her skin. The worn leathers she wore didn’t match any approved uniform, marking her as neither Grey Warden nor Inquisition. Curious, he paused, wondering what she was doing here, besides calmly placing arrows into targets with surprising focus and fluidity. 

Glancing around the courtyard, he beckoned over a passing Grey Warden, one of Nathaniel’s lieutenants, to ask if she knew the archer. The dwarven woman shrugged with a cheeky grin. “Wrong facial tattoos, Commander. You should ask Velanna. She’s the one who found her.” Considering that a sufficient answer, Sigrun skipped away on whatever errand he had interrupted her from. 

He reviewed his paths for the afternoon, trying to recall if he’d seen the elven Grey Warden lieutenant recently. Not that he had noted. He would need to seek her out to get his answers. 

Then he shook his head with a faint huff of a laugh. Foolishness. It would be far simpler to ask the archer directly. 

Approaching the woman, he waited until she had finished emptying her quiver before speaking. “I thought I knew all of the Inquisition troops.” 

“I’m sure you do.” Acknowledging him with a brief look, she walked to the targets to retrieve her arrows, resuming the conversation when she returned to her shooting line. “You seem like a very good commander.” 

Lips quirking at the compliment delivered with near disregard, he persisted. “You don’t appear to be a Grey Warden either.” 

“Also true.” She timed her words between shots, preventing even her breathing from disrupting her aim. 

Abandoning his brief attempts at subtlety, Cullen asked bluntly. “So what are you doing here?” 

“Practicing _Vir Bor’assan_ , the Way of the Bow. Bend but never break. A devotee of Andruil must be as limber as her weapon. As the sapling bends, so must she.” 

Cullen waited for her to continue, but she resumed her shooting, apparently considering that a sufficient answer. Eventually, he huffed out a breath through his nose, speaking more abruptly. “As fascinating as Dalish meditation may be, we both know what I meant.” 

She finally stopped, lowering her bow and turning to face him. He finally got a clear look at her tattoos, lines like a drawn bow across her face. Her brief frown pulled at them, distorting the image for a moment before she spoke as bluntly as he had. “The truth, then. I’ve been watching you since before the sky was torn open.” 

Of all the answers he might have been expecting, that ranked nowhere on the list, and it shocked him into silence for a moment. 

The archer glanced away, running her thumbnail over the fletching on the arrow she still held nocked. “Not you, personally. The Conclave, then the Inquisition afterwards.” 

Cullen frowned. “By watching, you mean spying.” 

She shrugged, meeting his gaze directly again. “Call it observing cautiously.” Was that a hint of a smile? He couldn’t be sure under the tattoos. 

Raising an eyebrow, Cullen regarded her curiously. “If you’ve been ‘observing’ that long unnoticed, why are you here now?” 

“I couldn’t see very well.” She gestured with her bow at the high stone battlements of the Keep. “Not with all of those walls in the way.” 

Cullen stared sternly, and this time he was quite certain he glimpsed a smile before she gave a proper answer. 

“I got tired of only watching; I wanted to help.” She sounded almost defensive about her desire to get involved. “I saw Velanna leading a patrol, and I thought if people can respect one woman with vallaslin, then maybe there’s a place for another one. It was worth coming out of hiding to try to make a difference.” 

Cullen found himself impressed. That sort of determined spirit would be sorely needed, and they were hardly in a position to be suspicious about potential allies. “Welcome to the Inquisition, then.” 

He left a pause as almost a question, and she filled it as he’d hoped. “Lavellan.” A pause with another hint of a smile. “Sulevin.” 

\--------

After the Redcliffe expedition returned at half strength, nothing happened. Dorian closed himself up in a room with Solas and Avernus, and the three barely said more than a handful of words to anyone else. The muttered, secretive conferences grated on Cullen’s nerves. More waiting. 

Finally, after two weeks of maddening silence, the mages came out of their miniature conclave and called for a meeting of the Grey Warden and Inquisition leadership. Cullen joined the others gathering at the officer’s mess table, tense with anticipation to finally hear what good had come of the Redcliffe mission. 

Once everyone had assembled, Dorian rose to draw attention. “The bad news is that the Venatori cannot close rifts, as we had hoped.” He paused, letting the pronouncement hang in the air for a moment before offering a small, secretive smile. “The good news is that it may not matter. Because we’ve found something even better.” 

After days of waiting to hear something concrete, Cullen’s patience ran out. “Enough theatrics. What did you find in those papers that was worth two lives?” 

The mage’s enthusiasm dimmed for a moment, but his ego rallied. “My master has finally succeeded in his lifelong quest for travel via the Fade. He’s opening the rifts as paths.” 

Alarmed, Cullen considered the strategic ramifications. “How big are these rifts, how stable? Could he move entire armies past defensive lines?” 

“Ah, no, you misunderstand, Commander. These rifts don’t allow movement through space. They permit movement through time.” 

A stunned silence filled the table in the wake of that pronouncement, and Dorian preened, pleased with the effect he had produced. 

Avernus stepped in to occupy the ensuing silence. “This feat should be impossible. It requires a fascinating manipulation of energies. I cannot imagine the Venatori magisters came to this on their own; Corypheus must have a hand in their success. The potential inherent in a darkspawn magister…” 

Nathaniel cut him off with a sharp, impatient wave of his hand. “As fascinating as this doubtless is, how do we use the information?” 

“It may give us a way to close the rifts after all.” Dorian’s smile held victory and a trace of understandable vindication. 

Solas had been sitting quietly, unheeded through the dramatic pronouncements. He shifted position, straightening in his seat and somehow drawing attention through the subtle motion. He waited until he had all eyes on him before speaking, softly and seriously. “Only the Mark can mend the Breach, because of its connection to the magic that created it.” 

Cullen’s mouth flooded with the taste of bile at the bitter reminder of his failure, of helplessly sitting idle as he watched a friend die. He swallowed it back and spoke, more harshly than he had intended. “That does us little good now.” 

“Now, yes.” Solas nodded, unperturbed by his anger. “But in the past?” 

The mood around the table changed, attention sharpening as the implications sunk in. 

Solas continued. “I believe the Mark itself is not inherently fatal. The Herald’s tragic fate resulted from interactions, the Mark warring with the lyrium in his body. In someone else, the magic of the Mark might be mastered, harnessed to useful purpose.” 

Alexia spoke, articulating what they all must be thinking. “You intend to send someone back to take the Mark, creating a new Herald who can tolerate the magic.” Cullen shoved aside the memories of glowing purple pain that her voice conjured, grounding himself in the present moment rather than his legion of regrets. 

Dorian responded proudly to her suggestion. “Precisely. With Alexius’s spell, we can change all of this.” 

“Who will go?” Cassandra cut straight to practicalities. “If this is to be done, who do we choose to bear the risk of the Mark?” 

“It may be easier to begin with who cannot.” Dorian pursed his lips. “It clearly cannot be a Templar, as evidenced by Ser Hugh’s unfortunate reaction. Nor yourself, Seeker. We cannot risk the Mark responding poorly to your innate suppression of the Fade.” 

“Does the Taint pose any risk with the Mark?” Nathaniel had clearly realized that left mostly Grey Wardens as candidates. 

“It’s impossible to say with certainty, not having seen the Mark myself.” The others deferred to Avernus as the expert on the Taint. “But the question is irrelevant. The transport spell will not work for a Grey Warden. The energies involved in opening the controlled rift rely closely on the blood of the subject to be transported. I hypothesize that the effects of Tainted blood would be undesirable. It is possible Venatori using blood magic might power the spell differently, but that helps us little.” 

“While we are making lists,” Dorian added, “Solas and I must be excluded, as well. Holding the rift open stably through the ritual will require our involvement as participants, not subjects.” 

Everyone’s eyes scanned around the table, seeing who remained, given the criteria provided. The list of possibilities narrowed down quickly as the Grey Wardens and Chantry soldiers were eliminated. Several gazes, including Cullen’s, paused on Varric. 

The dwarf raised his hands defensively. “Don’t look at me. I’m no hero, just a biographer.” 

The inevitable shift of attention to Hawke set Cullen’s teeth on edge. 

“What about it, Hawke?” Varric shrugged as if the choice should be obvious. “Not a Templar or a Warden, and you’re a proven leader.” 

“You can’t be serious!” Cullen couldn’t sit idly by and wait for her reply. “The Inquisition needs to rally the support of all sides to restore sanity. The warring factions cannot possibly unite around the woman who caused such destruction.” His lip curled into a sneer. “Her lover started this war.” 

Hawke shot to her feet, knocking her chair back to clatter on the floor. Her face twisted with tightly controlled fury. “I’m not responsible for his actions, and I never condoned what he did.” 

Cullen rose to face her, refusing to be intimidated by her bluster. “You may as well have. You shielded him from justice.” 

Her harsh laugh startled him, incongruous. “If only I could have.” 

Cullen frowned, continuing undeterred. “He was spared facing the consequences of his actions, thanks to you. Others paid for what he did, and paid in blood.” He pointed a finger across the table at her angrily. “You protected him. You helped him get away with it. You can’t have disapproved too strenuously.” 

Hawke’s eyes grew even harder, narrowing with fury. “I don’t owe you an explanation.” Her glare raked around the table. “Any of you.” She strode away, leaving a fragile silence in her wake. Casting a reproachful glare of his own at Cullen, Varric stood and followed her. 

The resulting awkward tension was broken by Josephine’s forced brightness. She checked off notations on the list pinned to her omnipresent board. “If Varric declines and Hawke would be too divisive a candidate, we are left with few suitable choices.” 

Cassandra sighed, sounding resigned and angry, but in a hollow, defeated sort of way. “Leliana. It should have been Leliana. She could have mastered the politics and blades alike.” 

Josephine made a moue. “I fear I would be ill suited in the latter category.” 

“Send me.” An unexpected voice interjected. 

Cullen turned to the source, surprised to see Sulevin step forward. She must have been listening unobserved the entire time. Well, she’d said she was a spy, hadn’t she? 

Her head remained unbowed under the pressure of skeptical eyes. “I’m no diplomat, but I can do what needs to be done and take advice from those who know what I don’t.” She nodded to Josephine, Cassandra, and Cullen. 

Cassandra looked taken aback. “The Herald of Andraste, a Dalish elf?” 

“The artifact and Mark are elvhen magic.” Solas’s neutral observation held weight. 

“Andraste freed my people.” Sulevin met Cassandra’s challenge undeterred. “If she saw value in our kind, can you not do the same?” 

Avernus regarded her with clinical detachment. “I must examine you to be certain, but I see no obvious objection.” He turned to Solas. 

The elf nodded. “The Mark should take well to one of the people.” 

Cullen realized events were sweeping along faster than he could keep up. He struggled to remain in control, to appear decisive as the military leader of this movement. “I want to see a plan. A full proposal with contingencies for what must be done. Options. Likely risks.” He turned to look at Sulevin, wondering at her transition from spy to central participant. “If you are certain you want to make this offer.” 

She regarded him with dark eyes, her gaze calm but intense. “This is a chance to undo this disaster, to save the world for everyone, my people as well as yours.” Her lips curled into a small smile. “I came here because I want to help. I won’t back out now simply because the job is bigger than I expected.” 

\-------

Varric followed after Hawke as she stalked out of the conference, lagging behind to give her some space as she made her way up to the battlements. She stared out over the countryside, eyes unfocused and unseeing. 

Varric gave her some time with her thoughts before approaching obviously, not trying to mask his footfalls. Her shoulders tensed as she realized she wasn’t alone, but she didn’t turn to look at him, even when she started speaking. 

“I hate when people talk about him like that, like they can judge him based on one thing, one part of his life.” Her jaw clenched, teeth grinding together. “They never knew him like I did.” 

Past tense. Varric had suspected as much when she arrived with only Sunshine, but it still hit like a crossbow bolt to the gut. Not the least because of the flat, matter of fact way she said it, like she was talking about a stranger, someone like the unlamented viscount, not the man she loved. 

“No one knew him like you did.” Varric leaned on the battlements beside her, looking out over the wall rather than at her. “You’re the only one he ever let in, the one person he trusted.” 

“And what good did it do either of us?” She sounded bitter and angry, familiar emotions that seemed to have become her default state. “I wasn’t there. When it mattered most, when he needed me…” Her voice choked off. 

“You were at his side.” Varric spoke gently, hoping to get through past her guilt. “Hawke, you dragged Blondie back from the edge of madness more times than I want to count. You refused to let him give up. You stood by him when even he thought he ought to die.” He sighed. “Even a hero only gets so many miracles, Hawke. Time finally ran out, for both of you. It’s a shitty ending, though, and not the one either of you deserves.” 

He paused, turning an idea over in his head. “But you know, Hawke, if what they’re saying in there is true, _it can be rewritten_. They send someone back to fix the past, and nothing after the Conclave has to happen this way again.” 

Hawke shook her head, finally turning to look at him, face lined with pain. “But what if it does? Maybe I can’t change any of this, and I’ll just fail him all over again.” 

“You won’t.” Varric returned her gaze, trying to transmit his firm conviction in her. “That would be a damned poor ending to this story, and I’m insulted you think I’d ruin my master work like that.”


	4. Chapter 4

Adrenaline sped Cullen’s pace as he ran up the stairs to the battlements, trailing after the Warden-Commander. He would have cursed the heavy armor that slowed his pace, but he suspected he’d be needing it very soon if the scouting reports were accurate. Nathaniel reached the top of the stairs, rushing to the wall to look out over the fields. His low curse told Cullen what to expect once he made it to the Grey Warden’s side. 

Despite this advance warning, the sight horrified him. 

It was Haven all over again. A mass of troops marching on their position, lit by an unsettling red glow seeping through seams of massive armor, marching under the banner of a flaming sword. The Red Templars had come to Vigil’s Keep. 

They weren’t ready, couldn’t possibly expect to hold against such an overpowering force. Helpless fury began to churn in his gut. Given the troops he had seen at Haven, this approaching army represented a mere fraction of the enemy’s strength. And even so, it would be enough. 

But what choice did they have but to resist as fiercely as possible? The mages needed more time to study and adapt the time rift spell. If Cullen’s troops could not promise victory, at least they could buy that time. 

“Redcliffe must have gotten their attention.” Nathaniel sounded distracted, focusing on irrelevancies Cullen didn’t have time for. 

“Perhaps. Or the Inquisition escaping their grasp at Haven. Or your outpost of rebel Grey Wardens. Or Corypheus controls enough of Orlais that he’s turning his attention to the Fereldan Northlands.” He clenched a gauntleted fist tight, resisting the urge to slam it down on the stone wall. “Why doesn’t matter. The only question now is how long we hold the walls and how much we make them bleed to take this keep.” 

“We are not giving up.” Nathaniel turned on him, dark eyes blazing with an energy Cullen envied. “This is my home. I’ve held these walls against a darkspawn horde. I won’t be giving them away so easily to a bunch of lyrium-addled puppets.” 

Cullen gritted his teeth, shrugging off the lyrium fog rising in his own mind at the presence of the approaching force. “We’ll need a clear line of command; there can’t be two Commanders in this siege.” He squared his shoulders, preparing to sacrifice control. “They’re my soldiers, but you know the fortress. You have, as you say, weathered assaults inside these walls. Decide how best to defend this keep, and I’ll deploy my people according to your orders.” 

Nathaniel nodded sharply, a flicker of sympathy in his eyes acknowledging the difficulty of relinquishing authority like that. Then he began sketching out plans, a grim set to his jaw as he strode back down the stairs to the courtyard, snapping orders to his lieutenants gathered awaiting his descent. 

Upon receiving his instructions, Cullen raised a fist to his heart in a brief salute, then turned on his heel and jogged to where the Inquisition troops had been forming up since the scouts gave the initial alarm. They had their orders, and they would be ready. 

“Inquisition! The enemy is at the gates. But this is not Haven! We have walls, and we will defend them. We will make the enemy pay for every life they took.” Cullen stared at the assembled ranks, watching as anger replaced their fear. Good, they would need that anger. “Mages and archers, to the walls. Templars and soldiers, hold the doors. Except for you.” He gestured to one unit, composed of veterans he could count on to keep their heads. “Remain in reserve in the main courtyard. Await orders to reinforce the doors or walls, wherever a breach occurs.” 

He looked over his troops again, feeding off their determination and trust. Holding his own head higher, he drew his sword and raised it, calling a battle cry as he sent his forces to what he sincerely hoped would not be a repeat of their last encounter. 

\---------

The next few hours blurred together for Cullen into a haze of combat, of killing and protecting, losing time into periods of thinking no further than the end of his own blade. The chaotic fog was punctuated by moments of surreal clarity. Repelling scaling ladders as misshapen, glowing forms clambered over crenellations onto the battlements. Sprinting across open ground at the head of a sortie, cutting a path for men with axes and broad shoulders to hack the ladders down at the base. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the bloody King of Ferelden, the pair of them holding a postern gate shut until it could be properly barricaded against the press of enemies trying to force their way in. 

Despite having turned nominal command over to Nathaniel, Cullen couldn’t so easily shed the feeling of responsibility for his troops. He had organized, trained, and led those soldiers, and the moral responsibility for their success and well-being lay with him, regardless of who officially commanded the overall forces. In the moments when his own life wasn’t in immediate danger, Cullen scanned the battle as best he could. He had to maintain a sense of the various threats and the strength of his individual units in order to send the mobile reserves to where they would be most effective at any given time. 

His limited assessment suggested that the defenders had succeeded at repelling the initial assault. The Vigil held, for now. But they couldn’t sustain their defense against an attack of this intensity. For every Red Templar that fell, another stepped in to fill the gap. Their numbers appeared limitless, or at least large enough that they might as well be, in any practical sense. In contrast, the thin-stretched Grey Warden and Inquisition forces diminished in effectiveness with every casualty. Cullen abandoned any attempt at keeping count of the bodies lying motionless, dead or soon to be, or the wounded being dragged or hobbling away from the walls. The specifics didn’t matter. All he needed to know was that each wave of the enemy attack whittled away at their already small numbers, decreasing their strength far more rapidly than they could afford. Cullen could only hope that Nathaniel’s vantage, less limited than his own, offered a more positive picture of the siege overall. Taking orders chafed less than going into combat blind, lacking the reports and updates he had grown accustomed to. 

As the fight wore on, Cullen tried not to look too hard at the enemy. If he did, he knew that he would see familiar faces in the twisted horrors assaulting the keep. It felt as though he knew every man and woman on the other end of his blade, despite the improbability of him having personally served or interacted with every Templar in the Order. At first he’d tried to guess their identities, studying each face for glimpses of familiar features. But the distortion of the red lyrium made that impossible. Or rather made it all too possible. He could see a person he recognized in the twisted features of a Red Templar as easily as his childhood self had imagined faces in knotted wood or his sister Mia had found animals in the clouds. He couldn’t know which flashes of recognition were genuine and which were a product of his fears. 

Either way, he couldn’t afford the hesitation that came with wondering if he was about to kill someone he had once called friend. So he stopped looking at their faces, stopped thinking about how easily he could have been among their number, and simply killed them as efficiently as he could. Slicing open an artery or severing an appendage, letting them bleed out quickly. If any of them were his former friends, the greatest kindness he could offer to the horrors they had become, in memory of that friendship, was a clean death. 

A gap in the fighting came as the enemy regrouped from another failed assault. Each time the wave of red horrors receded, it left mangled defenders lying scattered like flotsam washing ashore after a shipwreck. Forcing his eyes away from the sight – he could do nothing more for them now – Cullen claimed a moment to catch his breath. He blanked all of the worries and chaos from his mind and focused simply on the slow flow of air in and out of his lungs, an abbreviated form of Templar meditation exercises. 

Cullen’s pulse steadied to a slow, even rhythm as the adrenaline cleared from his bloodstream. He took stock of each region of his body, assessing for minor injuries or soreness that he would need to compensate for when the fighting began again in earnest. Muscle fatigue, bruising. Nothing serious. 

A loud shuddering crack rent the air and splinters of wood scored across his unprotected face as the barricaded postern door burst open. Raising his sword and shield, Cullen ran to meet the new threat, closing half the distance before the debris had cleared enough for him to see what he faced. 

Silhouetted in the opening stood a hulking form that had once been human but now could scarcely deserve the name. Massive spikes of red crystal burst through skin stretched over bulging protrusions of muscle. The standard Templar armor had been mangled and hacked apart to accommodate the horror’s malformed growth. Splinters of wood clung to the huge mace-like crystal it had used to batter through the door. Cullen recoiled in revulsion as he realized that was not a giant weapon but rather a fused extension of the monster’s arm. 

As the horror stepped forward, clearing the postern, more distorted forms poured in through the gap it had created. If Cullen and the others in this side courtyard couldn’t force them back, Vigil’s Keep would fall, the defenders overwhelmed from without and within the walls. He had no time to think, only to react. Cullen charged towards the Red Templars spilling in through the postern, refusing to look at their faces. They were men made of glowing red lyrium and powered by madness. He must stop them. Nothing else mattered. 

Cullen caught glimpses of others joining him in holding back the ingress. The Hero-Queen’s massive blade swept through the enemy’s front lines, hacking off arms and biting deeply into torsos, her butchery scarcely slowed by the foes’ heavy armor. The force of her blows sent enemies reeling, keening in pain as blood gushed from gaping rents in their flesh. 

In contrast, the cheeky Grey Warden lieutenant – Sigrun, that was her name – slipped through the enemy’s lines like smoke. She slid behind or beneath her opponents’ guards, her sharp blades finding gaps in armor to hamstring or gut. Sigrun’s targets rarely died from her first strike, but they collapsed to the ground bleeding heavily from small, precise cuts. Few had the opportunity to regain their feet, a flick of the dwarven woman’s blade slicing open carotid or femoral arteries to empty their lifeblood in violent spurts out onto the flagstones. 

Cullen made no pretense to similar theatrics. He fought methodically, assessing each threat as it came, absorbing blows on his raised shield, and selecting a pattern of attack that would wear down or incapacitate his opponent. Some of the Red Templars he faced met their end with his sword through a lung, while others found their life seeping out through a shallow-but-deep-enough cut to the armpit. Style and signature hardly mattered. At the end of the day, victory would be determined by who still lived, and Cullen would use whatever means were necessary to ensure that those who threatened this keep were not among that company. 

Cullen saw a handful of the veterans from his reserve unit mixed in with the Red Templars gathered around the monstrosity that had burst through the postern. Swords clashed on armor and shields, and the cries of pain, anger, and triumph melded together. Sigrun slid through the gaps in the melee, like a fish swimming between reeds. The Red Templars seemed oblivious to her, focused on the more traditional threat of soldiers in heavy armor with larger blades. That oversight cost them dearly. Wherever Sigrun passed, the enemies faltered, flinching or staggering in the wake of her flicking daggers. Cullen noted with grim satisfaction how quickly his soldiers capitalized on the openings she left them, striking down their distracted enemies.

A forceful shout drew Cullen’s attention to Alistair, the king slamming his shield into a massive Red Templar only a handsbreath shorter than the one that had shattered their barricade. Remarkably, the Templar staggered and fell under the calculated shield bash. Alistair’s sword slid home into flesh exposed between the mangled plates of armor, stabbing sharply. By the time Cullen could spare another glance, the king had moved on to the next target, leaving the lyrium-encrusted horror thrashing weakly in a rapidly growing pool of blood tinged an unnatural red. 

The horror that had burst into the courtyard first let out an inhuman bellow as its fellow fell, raising its massive clubbed arm. Sigrun darted into the opening, ducking beneath the upheld macelike crystal mass to strike at the creature’s back. Catching sight of her movement, the lyrium horror whirled around, startlingly fast for its size. Its massive arm swung down, catching the dwarven woman and hurling her away. Sigrun crumpled to the ground, and a spray of blood flew in sizzling drops from the blazing red crystal. 

Alexia screamed, surging forward. Wild swings of her greatsword carved a bloody path through the lesser corrupted Templars to where the dwarven Grey Warden had fallen. She put her weight and momentum into the press, driving them back from a crumpled body she must know couldn’t hold life. Tears ran down her face, her features distorted with fury, but her arms never faltered, that deadly blade continuing in broad sweeps that bit into every Red Templar who dared approach her. 

“Bear pit!” Cullen called out the command in a voice intended to carry over the tumult. A chorus of “aye”s erupted from several of the veteran soldiers, acknowledging his tactic, and they converged on the massive Templar horror as a group. No single warrior, however skilled, would bring that thing down, and Cullen would never be foolish enough to try unless he had no alternative. His pack of bear-baiters ringed the oversized monstrosity, closing in to harry it from all sides. There was nothing elegant about the tactic, all of them hacking away, repeated blows from multiple swords inevitably wearing the monster down. Blood droplets and shards of brittle red crystal flew every time a blade connected with corrupted flesh. Cullen shuddered inside as the red lyrium chips ricocheted from his breastplate, but outwardly he remained resolute, focused only on the goal. He blocked out the screams of pain as his men sustained injuries. There would be time to mourn their sacrifices later, and without those sacrifices, this monster would claim far more lives as it rampaged unchecked through the Vigil’s defenders. 

Finally, the giant Templar horror fell, collapsing heavily to the ground, seeping blood that glistened like liquid lyrium, a vibrant red that both compelled and horrified. Cullen slashed his blade into the monster’s unprotected throat, smiling with grim satisfaction as two other swords hacked in towards the same target at different angles. Between the various strokes, they succeeded in nearly severing the helmed head from its malformed, bulging shoulders. The thing that had once been a knight-captain, judging by the insignia on its armor, would claim no more victims. 

Without a pause to savor the victory, Cullen turned to the remaining Red Templars in the courtyard. Their numbers had been diminished, and their morale seemed broken now that the horrors leading them were dead. The defenders made short work of the remains of the assault, killing them or forcing them back through the broken postern. 

Sigrun’s was not the only body on the blood-soaked flagstones of the courtyard by the time the intruders had been cleared and the barricade reestablished. Alistair gently pulled his wife away from her futile attempts to straighten the dwarven lieutenant’s mangled form into a semblance of peaceful repose. Cullen intently studied each Inquisition casualty, making mental note of the lives lost for their cause. He’d trained and led these soldiers; he owed them at least this much. Proper honors would be paid later, assuming anyone remained to do the honoring. 

\----------

The assault stretched into the night and through it, bursts of fighting continuing into the early hours of morning. Every rule of war he knew prescribed rhythms to a siege, lulls as both sides regrouped and marshalled their strength. But red lyrium gave the attackers inhuman reserves and little need for food or rest. The corrupted Templars pressed their siege relentlessly in a way no human army could match. 

In a way that the defenders inside the keep couldn’t match. Looking around, Cullen saw the grey faces of exhausted soldiers on every side. The Grey Wardens fared marginally better than his Inquisition soldiers, but their enhanced stamina came at a cost, and it couldn’t hold out forever. During brief, fleeting gaps in the combat, the seneschal’s men and women passed through with hastily assembled rations. But a few gulps of soup or bites of jerky, however welcome, wouldn’t sustain any of them through another day of uninterrupted combat. 

Cullen staggered as he moved to the main gate, shuddering under repeated blows as the Red Templars attempted to breach it. Exhaustion made him clumsy, his movements sluggish as his limbs felt filled with lead. Every soldier he passed was in at least as bad of shape, none of them free of wounds and some barely managing to keep their feet. Maker’s breath, it had only been a day! He wasn’t sure they would withstand another like it. 

Sometime in the night, Cullen had resigned himself to the inevitable. Their defense was no longer a matter of holding the fortress. Against a foe so obviously and inhumanly superior, all they could do was make every flagstone they gave up cost the enemy as dearly as possible. 

Another blow thundered against the outside of the gate, bowing it inwards. Cracks ran through the heavy wooden bar that held the doors closed. The weathered timber groaned as it twisted under the assault, finally shattering as Cullen had known it must. Enemy troops poured in through the gate, the lyrium crystals embedded under their skin glowing an ominous blood red in the weak light of dawn. 

Raising his sword with an arm that responded a fraction of a second more slowly than it should have, Cullen squared off against another faceless former brother. Maker’s blood, was there no end to them? 

Over the clash of metal on metal and the cries of the wounded, Cullen heard the distant call of war horns. Shouts went up from the walls, and some of the words filtered down to him. Another force approaching. Maker’s breath, why? The besiegers already had sufficient numbers to grind the combined Grey Warden and Inquisition armies beneath their boots. Bringing reinforcements at this point would be a particularly pointless sort of overkill. 

A runner darted by the defenders attempting to repel the assault at the gate, and Cullen felt a brief flash of jealousy at the young woman’s energetic movement. She dashed towards the command post, shouting her news. “Mabari! Reinforcements under a mabari banner.” 

Cullen’s fatigue-fogged brain took a moment to process meaning from her words. Reinforcements, but not for Corypheus’s army. Only Fereldans marched under a banner of a warhound. 

Vigil’s Keep had been granted a reprieve. 

A ragged laugh burst from another man fighting to hold the gate, and Cullen belatedly recognized Alistair, his face smeared with grime and blood. “Remind me to give Teagan an arling.” 

“You already did, love.” Alexia responded from across a knot of Templar attackers, answering casually, as if they weren’t in the midst of a pitched battle. She stepped forward to slice her greatsword into another opponent, moving with ease. 

Void take their damned Grey Warden stamina. 

After a pause to block a forceful overhand cut with his shield, Alistair resumed the conversation. “Do you think he wants a second one?” 

Alexia snorted. “I’m not sure he wanted the one he has. Even before the Venatori took it from him.” 

Cullen made a point of ignoring the rest of their conversation. No one should be able to chat blithely while killing people at the end of a twenty hour siege. He refused to let their irrelevancies distract him. Reinforcements had arrived; for the first time since this siege began, the defenders had hope. But they could not afford to let down their guard before the victory was complete. 

Despite the walls blocking his view of the battlefield, Cullen could tell the moment the Red Templars turned to face the new threat. The momentum of the fight shifted. The force of Templars pressing in through the keep gate weakened, and the defenders regained ground, pushing them back and reclaiming the courtyard step by grueling step. Their line of counterattack didn’t stop at the gate, instead surging out from the walls to join the battle outside. 

Once outside the keep, Cullen got his first clear view of the field of combat. The Red Templars spread across the open field in front of Vigil’s Keep like a corruption, an amorphous dark red stain, glowing ominously. Beyond them, the Ferelden army was a silvery line, a mass of shining steel pressing inexorably forward. The outcome had become inevitable; caught between the army and the Vigil’s defenders, the Red Templars would be slowly and methodically ground down. 

Without waiting to receive confirmation from Nathaniel, Cullen issued the order that the soldiers would be waiting to hear. The one they needed to go forward with clear heads. The one he would be waiting for in their place. “Inquisition! Wardens! Advance. Give no quarter. Destroy them all.” 

And Maker have mercy on them for the men they used to be before the lyrium destroyed them. 

From there, it was simply a matter of hard, brutal work, more butchery than battle. Outnumbered and with their morale broken, the Red Templars fought with desperation but little skill or order. The Inquisition forces suffered losses and sustained injuries, but eventually, as Cullen had known they must, they succeeded. A ragged cheer went up from the exhausted defenders when the last lyrium-corrupted monstrosity fell, the giant brute hacked apart by a combination of Inquisiton and Fereldan soldiers. 

Cullen watched the soldiers celebrate or collapse in exhaustion. Wishing he could join them, he instead began planning for the aftermath of the battle. The healers and surgeons should be standing by to triage the wounded. He would need to meet with the officers to obtain lists of casualties in order to determine how best to recombine units in light of their diminished strength. He ought to meet with Nathaniel and the Fereldan general, as well, to establish plans going forward. After that, Maker willing, he might indulge in a few hours to wolf down whatever food was at hand and collapse into bed. 

\-----------

Varric couldn’t help but think that time sped up after the siege. The Fereldan army encamped like a thicket outside the walls, a massive dark hedge that sprang up overnight. Everything else seemed to move into fast motion as well, plans falling into place and events rushing towards an inevitable narrative climax. 

Chuckles, Sparkler, and the creepy ancient Grey Warden mage treated the attack like an inconvenient interruption to their research. Once the immediate threat passed, they went right back to closeting themselves away, planning and muttering. That Dalish woman – the Herald-to-be – got dragged into their council periodically so they could poke, prod, and lecture at her. But otherwise, no one saw much of the three of them. 

The same couldn’t be said for the new Herald, though; everyone seemed to want to claim a piece of her time. She’d been spending a lot of time with Ruffles, Curly, and the Seeker, by turns. If a Dalish hunter was going to be their only shot at saving the world, everyone wanted a chance at making sure she had the right priorities and information. Varric kept waiting for her to change her mind in the face of the growing pressure, to come to her senses and run. The woman’s nerves had to be drawn as tight as her bowstring, but that didn’t ever seem to show on her marked face. It looked like the Inquisition had found a proper hero entirely by accident. At least they had the sense to not squander her potential when she fell into their laps. 

Just before the waiting crossed the tipping point from annoying to unbearable, the mages finally emerged from their secretive conferences, announcing that their preparations were complete. A few of the key players for the final assault hadn’t fully recovered from the siege, but access to the Grey Warden’s healers sped their convalescence considerably. The final plan should be set into motion soon. 

It turned out there was just one other minor detail no one had thought to mention. 

\--------

“The spell must be cast at Haven?” Cullen stared hard at Dorian. He couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly. The very idea was madness. 

“Of course.” The Tevinter spread his hands, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Why did no one think to mention this before?” 

“I didn’t think it should need to be mentioned.” Dorian’s condescension caused Cullen to grind his teeth. “The rifts cannot travel across distance, only through time. If we are to send Lavellan to the Conclave, it must be done in the location where the Conclave occurred. And where it will occur again, from her perspective.” 

“Impossible.” Cassandra’s flat negation echoed Cullen’s thoughts. “You were there to see Haven fall. The entire site is in enemy hands, and you saw what the Red Templars can do. We cannot possibly reclaim Haven against Corypheus’s full army.” 

“We don’t have to.” Avernus’s thin smile sent a chill down Cullen’s spine. “We only need to hold it for the length of a single spell.” 

“And just a few yards to cast it in.” Dorian agreed. 

Cullen snorted. They made it sound so easy. “A few yards squarely in the center of enemy territory that must be cleared to reach them.” 

“It doesn’t matter.” Sulevin’s calm voice cut through the argument and quelled some of Cullen’s frustration. “This is our only choice, so we’ll find a way to do it.” 

Her firm determination quieted the debate, an echo of the moment when she’d volunteered to become the Herald. Cullen should have come to expect that firm pragmatism from her by now, after so many long conversations planning what she should do after passing through the rift. In coaching her to navigate the Conclave and the power vacuum that would follow, he’d learned to read her expressions beyond the striking vallaslin that had distracted him initially. 

Searching Sulevin’s face now, he found not a trace of fear, only determination and faith. Faith, remarkable for a Dalish scout, in Andraste and, even more unbelievable, in him. 

Cullen couldn’t imagine what he had done to earn such unwavering respect and admiration, but he vowed not to disappoint her. Squaring his shoulders, he endeavored to match her level of determination and focus. “At least we have a proper army now. We must coordinate our approach with General Guerrin to ensure that the Fereldan and Inquisition troops support one another most effectively.” 

“Commander, you cannot be serious!” Getting Josephine to show shock through her diplomatic mask was an achievement in and of itself. 

“As our Herald-elect says,” he gestured at Sulevin with a grim smile, “what alternative do we have?” 

Cassandra’s frown remained, but she accepted the inevitable and turned her focus to practicalities. “Corypheus himself will likely be there.” 

“Good.” Hawke spoke for the first time since the conference had begun, her voice hard and fierce. “I’ve been wanting another chance at that darkspawn bastard. Varric, are you in?” 

“Do you even have to ask?” The dwarf’s smile appeared genuine, tinged with a ruthless sort of anticipation. 

“The Wardens will join you, as well, obviously.” Nathaniel’s mouth drew into a tight frown. “Corypheus falls squarely within our mandate, and it falls to us to correct the order’s earlier failings to contain him and prevent all of this.” 

“Not to add further complications, but Corypheus has more than simply an army.” Josephine interjected again. “By all reports, he commands a dragon that can only be described as an archdemon.” 

“You’re in luck.” Alistair sounded far too cheery for someone planning a mass suicide mission. “You happen to have the only two living Grey Wardens who know how to take down one of those.” He turned to his wife. “It’s my turn this time.” 

She responded with a tight, fierce grin. “We’ll see.” 

Looking around the table, Cullen found himself surprised by a surge of cautious optimism. “We have the start of a plan, then. The details will need to be coordinated, but the general objectives are laid out.” He singled out each key individual. “The Fereldan army will be indispensable in getting us into Haven. Hawke and Nathaniel will lead a Grey Warden strike force against Corypheus. Their majesties should requisition whatever supplies and forces they’ll need to hold off the dragon. A core guard of warriors will escort the mages and Sulevin to the Temple ruins and hold a defensible position until the spellcasting is complete.” 

Every person at the table met his gaze without flinching or hesitation. The universal steely resolve gave him hope. “That ritual is our primary charge. All else is expendable. If they succeed, none of the rest matters. None of the rest _happens_.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “We have one chance. We cannot afford to fail.”


	5. Chapter 5

Haven. Nathaniel had never seen the place before and, given the disparate stories about it, he couldn’t imagine what to expect when they crested the rise and Haven came into view. An insular village, a holy shrine, a military encampment, a ruin. It seemed to have elements of all of them. 

Regardless, this was not how he would have wanted to see the place. Destroyed multiple times and rebuilt hastily over the ruins, full of fanatical Venatori, insane Templars, and Wardens corrupted into monsters. Not to mention viewed from the head of an army mounting an attack that was little better than mass suicide. 

The army had covered the ground from Vigil’s Keep in a steady forced march. None of the leaders were naïve enough to think they could achieve complete surprise, but the less time the enemy had to prepare for their attack, the better their chances of success. 

Before their final approach, the various strike forces had been separated out into their own units. Nathaniel walked at the head of the group tasked with facing Corypheus, and now, with the army surging through the main gates, it was finally time for his team to join the action. A quick glance inventoried the Wardens under his command, all present and accounted for, along with Varric and Hawke. His eyes lingered on Bethany, and she shot him a fierce smile in return, welcome in the midst of grim, determined faces. His entire squad knew their roles, and there would be no hesitation. 

Nathaniel signaled the advance, his group joining the press of soldiers pouring through the main gate and smashing gaps in the hastily-fortified walls. Once through the fortifications, he rallied his squad to carve a path towards where the scouts had reported sighting Corypheus. Nathaniel relied on his long knives for this close combat butchery, hoping he would gain enough space later to pull out his bow. 

The Wardens’ press towards Corypheus owed a great debt to Hawke and her massive greatsword. She cut through Venatori zealots, Red Templar, and Circle mages with equal ferocity, her face set in a rictus of a grin as that heavy blade swept through flesh, arcs of blood flying in its wake. Seeing her like this, he could almost believe Varric’s wildest tales about the Champion of Kirkwall. 

As Corypheus came into view, Nathaniel caught sight of the bodyguard surrounding him. It came as no surprise that an arrogant would-be deity would surround himself with minions, but Nathaniel hadn’t expected to see so many of them wearing familiar blue and grey tabards. Far too many for his liking. He kept his lips grimly pressed together, saying nothing. There was no purpose in telling his troops he would order them to cut down their former brethren. They had eyes of their own, and most would be keenly aware that only chance and the stubbornness of their commanders had spared them from being on the other end of this assault. 

The Song crowding at the edges of his mind had grown louder on their march to Haven, and today it crested into swells of sound that nearly deafened him. He could imagine Avernus savoring confirmation that the false Calling originated from Corypheus, but Nathaniel could only grit his teeth and try to think clearly past the distraction. 

He watched as the squad finished putting down a knot of Venatori zealots, the last one to fall sporting a crossbow bolt and burning robes. His troops had fought well, and they’d earned a moment to breathe before confronting Corypheus and his honor guard. After a few heartbeats’ pause, Nathaniel raised his blade and his voice in a time-honored Warden rallying cry. 

“In war, victory!” 

It was time to kill that talking darkspawn bastard and get some quiet back in his head. 

\--------------

Coming to Haven again after so many years felt like stepping through distorted glass. Alexia found everything familiar yet disturbingly not. The snow covered mountains formed the same silhouettes against the same grey sky, but now they towered over battered fortifications rather than a rustic village. The enemy consisted of heretical fanatics defending their supposed deity, but few of them resembled anything human, distorted by lyrium and possession. 

A dragon whirled and swept through the sky overhead, and Alexia’s head throbbed in a fitful counterpoint to the chaos that surrounded her. She kept reminding herself that, despite what Corypheus wished them to believe, he did not command a true archdemon. Despite the influence his magic had on the Taint. She tried to remain grounded in the present, her Warden senses reaching out for the two strong presences running through the chaos alongside her. She liked to imagine she could tell which one was Alistair, that she would always know him. But in truth, she wasn’t certain. If she could feel him more strongly, it resulted from greater Taint advancement in a Warden active during a Blight, not some romantic connection between them. Regardless, being able to feel the presence of another Warden – or two – nearby steadied her as it always had. 

The three Wardens slipped into the fortified village on the heels of a group of heavily-armed knights. Once they were inside the walls, Alexia spotted their objective, a ballista positioned precisely where Cullen had sketched it on his battle plans. A large group of Red Templars held a fortified positon around the siege weapon. Alexia grimaced but didn’t slow her stride. The guards were an annoyance, but ultimately they didn’t matter. The Wardens’ plan to neutralize the dragon hinged on that ballista, so they needed to take control of that position. No other option existed. 

The Red Templars saw them coming, bracing for their attack. Alexia broke into a sprint, hearing Alistair’s pace speed alongside her. They slammed into the Templar ranks together, and the enemy lines broke under their attack. The Red Templars scattered, hacked apart by her greatsword or battered by Alistair’s shield. Elemental energy crackled past them to scorch and sear, proof that Velanna remained at their back. As they closed in on the ballista, Alexia tore her gaze from the immediate enemies to scan the sky, trusting her companions to keep her safe for the moments it took to locate their ultimate target. 

A dark fleck in her peripheral vision caught her attention, and she turned, seeing the dragon. It almost resembled a bat at that distance, leathery wings flapping as it circled above Corypheus’s position. “There!” She pointed her sword. “Time to get its attention.” 

In response to her words, a bolt of lightning split the sky, and the dragon abandoned its circling, veering towards their position. A grin of fierce satisfaction split Velanna’s face as the residual energies from the spell crackled around her. The dragon swept closer, and Alexia could make out details beyond the dark silhouette. The beast appeared diseased, its flesh tainted like that of its master. Alexia could understand how the resemblance to darkspawn might prompt observers to brand it an archdemon, but only if they’d never seen a true one. Loathsome as the creature might be, she couldn’t dignify it with the comparison. That scabrous, wretched thing was not on a par with Urthemiel. 

The dragon swept by above them, far overhead, and Alexia imagined she could feel the draft from its massive wings, even at that height. Velanna shot another blast of elemental energy at the creature. It dodged, screeching in startled fury, as it finally located the source of the attacks. Folding its wings, it dove towards them. 

Alexia tensed. Everything hinged on their next few moves going according to a highly risky plan. They had gambled everything on the hope that the dragon’s ego would drive it to attack them directly rather than blasting them with its breath. Cutting down another Red Templar who got in her way, Alexia took her place at the ballista controls. Sheathing her sword to free her hands, she put her faith in Alistair to keep the Templars off her back. She could feel him there without looking, her Warden sense combining with the familiar, metallic clash of his blade and shield to provide a comforting reassurance of his presence. 

The dragon swooped close overhead, and now there was no question of feeling its passage. The downdraft from its giant leathery wings buffeted Alexia back a step, and its foul stench nearly made her gag. Holding her breath against the smell, she felt her heart in her throat. They would probably only get one chance at this. Velanna shouted, sharp and high, and Alexia felt the warmth and moisture drawn from the air, leaving it dry and frosty cold against her skin. Ice crackled into existence, coalescing around the dragon’s body. The creature screeched in fury as the added weight disrupted its balance, one wingtip clipping a roof. The collision robbed the dragon of momentum, and its wings beat furiously to regain lost altitude, its menacing grace turned clumsy and desperate. 

Maker be praised, it was working. She heard Alistair grunt in pain behind her and had to fight the urge to go to him. “Almost there, love. Hold them off for one more pass.” 

“Hurry up or I’ll be too tired to take on the dragon. No fair wearing me out so you can get to it first.” 

She couldn’t help laughing. “I’ll see what I can do to hurry the giant flying lizard so you have a shot at it.” 

The ice on the dragon’s wings continued to slow it, cracking off and raining down as jagged frozen shards. The beast couldn’t gain loft, and its next pass came in much lower, finally within reach. The ground erupted into tangling vines that grappled at the dragon, snagging one of its hind legs. Tethered, the creature roared in fury as it crashed to the ground. It tore at the snare with claws and teeth, and strands of vine snapped under the assault. Velanna’s spell wouldn’t hold it for long. 

Gritting her teeth with effort, the Dalish Warden conjured more vines, wrapping the dragon’s leg as it verged on breaking free. Furious, the beast reared, screaming its outrage to the sky, wings spread to beat the air in a futile effort to rise. Alexia saw her chance. Knowing she would only have one shot, she held her breath, and released the ballista. 

The massive bolt flew true, shredding through the scabrous, leathery membrane of the dragon’s wing. 

Shrieking in agony, the monster bunched the muscles in its hind legs, pain giving it strength to break free of the clinging vines. The dragon leapt off the ground, hovering for a frozen moment before its ruined wing failed to catch the air. It crashed heavily back down, scoring a trench in the frozen dirt and crushing a handful of unfortunate Red Templars in its path. 

Alexia stepped away from the ballista, the siege weapon useless to her now that it had served its purpose. She drew her sword for the next phase of the fight, saluting Velanna in thanks for a job well done. 

The mage returned her salute with a rare smile before raising her hands to draw up a curtain of tangling roots that enclosed her as she sped towards the main Warden force facing Corypheus. 

Realizing it had been crippled, the dragon flailed in fury, lashing its tail and swiping with its claws. The jagged talons tore into a Red Templar who had gotten too close, scattering lyrium crystals and bright blood from the man’s mangled flesh. Seeing their comrade’s abrupt, gory end, the other Templars fell back, clearing a growing circle of space around the fallen beast. 

Alexia met Alistair’s eyes, both of them knowing this was their moment. She felt a fierce grin spread across her face. “It’s time to see if sitting on a throne’s slowed you down since the last time we did this.” 

“It’s been a decade. You can hardly expect me to be as fast as I was.” He returned her grin with a mischievous wink. “I’ve learned a few things, though.” 

“Prove it, then.” She hefted her sword. “Ready, love?” 

“Always.” 

Turning as one, they faced the giant monster side by side. 

 

For all that Corypheus wanted to style his dragon an archdemon, Alexia found it almost laughably easy to kill the creature, especially when compared to Urthemiel. Unable to fly, the majestic, deadly dragon became an ungainly, stumbling lizard. She and Alistair harried the fallen beast in a practiced pattern, taking turns striking at its rear legs and darting away from its angry retaliation. The dragon’s teeth and claws still had the power to cut through metal into the flesh beneath, but hobbled by its injury and the remains of Velanna’s clinging vines, it lacked the coordination to land more than glancing blows. 

Of course, given its size and strength, even glancing blows could do damage. Its lashing tail caught Alexia off guard as she failed to scramble away quickly enough after slicing through a tendon in its back leg. The force of the impact threw her to land several yards away, the air knocked from her lungs as she hit the ground. A sharp stab when she inhaled too deeply warned of at least one broken rib, so she did her best to control her breathing and ignore the pain as she charged back to draw the dragon away from Alistair. 

Alexia could have handled a dozen more blows, a score more injuries of her own, with less pain than hearing her husband scream as the dragon’s teeth closed around his shoulder. Alistair had gotten his shield raised in time to deflect the worst of the attack, but he hadn’t been able to escape it entirely, and Alexia fought nausea at the sight of a jagged, blackened tooth sunk into his shoulder blade. Screaming in fury, Alexia closed with the creature, swinging her greatsword in a reckless overhand arc that cost the dragon its eye and forced it to release its grip. Alistair staggered but kept his feet, raising his sword as he prepared to press their momentary advantage. 

Gradually, blow by blow, they whittled the dragon down until it could barely stand and the icy ground grew slick with the black ichor oozing from its wounds. In the end, Alistair struck the final blow, just as he’d wanted, burying his sword through the dragon’s eye socket to pierce its brain. 

Winded but triumphant, they stood by the fallen dragon for a moment, catching their breath and assessing the damage. Keeping her breaths shallow, Alexia winced in sympathy as she looked over her husband. His left arm hung limply from a crushed shoulder, the shield strapped to it useless as anything more than a barrier. She could see the pain of the injury in the lines of his face, the corded muscle in his neck, but his eyes burned with determination.

Swallowing down her horror at seeing him broken and in pain, Alexia forced a teasing smile. “This is what you get for wearing that new Warden uniform instead of proper steel.” She banged a fist on her own solid breastplate, the same one she’d worn to slay the archdemon.

He grimaced. “Not all of us have heirloom armor from an earlier age. Maker’s breath, how is that suit still holding together?”

Heartened that he had risen to her bait, Alexia turned her eyes back to the circle of Red Templars that surrounded them. The ring of steel and lyrium started to narrow, the Templars approaching now that the dragon had fallen. Raising her sword, Alexia set her feet firmly in the frozen dirt, ready to face the inevitable charge. Here, with the dragon’s solid bulk shielding their backs, would be as good a place as any to make a final stand. Despite everything they’d done, all of the impossibilities over the years, Alexia held no illusions about walking out of this. 

Somehow, she couldn’t find it in her to mind. Standing with her husband and partner by her side and the Calling weaving through her mind, surrounded by twisted enemies too numerous to count… This was exactly how she’d expected the inevitable end to come. She’d expected to go out fighting darkspawn rather than corrupted Templars, surrounded by Blight-ravaged stone caverns instead of a mountain snowpack. But the details didn’t matter in the end. The part of the plan that she cared about stood by her side, his presence warm and reassuring against her Warden sense. 

“It’s nice to do this in open air. Maybe we can start a new Warden tradition.” Alistair’s casual observation proved his thoughts had been running alongside hers. 

“You end up with fewer broodmothers this way, too. Someone should suggest it to Weisshaupt.” 

“Remind me to send them a letter when we get back home.” 

Alexia smiled, bracing herself as the first wave of Red Templars advanced on their position. Whatever came next, they would face it together.

\-------------

This felt almost like old times to Varric, heading into danger with Hawke and Sunshine, cutting through a mass of monsters to get to the head monster that needed to be put down. 

Today had all the makings of a perfect sequel. A grudge match against a foe they’d thought defeated, higher stakes with the world hanging in the balance, and action on an unprecedented scale. It was a shame no one would be around afterwards to hear the tale. 

Varric shifted his grip on Bianca, his beautiful lady as perfect as always. Her string sung as she landed shots carefully placed to clear Hawke’s path. Bianca might not be as dramatic and bold as that giant sword Hawke swung, but no one could deny her subtle, deadly elegance. 

A blue tabard came into his sights unexpectedly, and Varric had to shift his aim to avoid shooting an ally in the back. All of these Grey Wardens swarming around made for a disconcerting distraction. Hawke and her people had usually worked alone. Of course, the Grey Wardens had every right and reason to be here, and if the rest of their order had felt this kind of responsibility for cleaning up their messes… Well, maybe none of this would have happened in the first place. Helping take care of Corypheus now – better late than never – seemed like the least they could do. Even if they did clutter up his field of view while doing it. 

Time blurred as the world reduced down to the deadly choreography of combat. It could have been minutes or hours later when they finally got a clear view of Corypheus, his freakishly tall form towering over the remaining body guards that stood between him and his attackers. Varric held back to let Hawke take on the main event. He and Bianca could keep the distractions off her, but this was her show. 

Watching Hawke fight Corypheus, her massive sword and fiery determination against his inhuman strength and twisted magic, Varric couldn’t help but wonder if he’d bought into his own myths, let his tales distort his memories. Corypheus seemed somehow less than he remembered. Less prepared, less intimidating. To be fair, there would always be something at least a little intimidating about an eight foot tall darkspawn hurling elemental spells. But before, fighting him had felt like an epic showdown, and now, he was just a tall, creepy horror in a whole field full of nightmares. Maybe the darkspawn magister was out of his element without his little killing field of a prison. Or maybe they’d all just seen so much horror in the past year that it was hard for anything to stand out anymore. 

Not to mention that the would-be god’s power and majesty were lessened by the intensity of the battle going on around him. It was hard to be properly awed by someone who was constantly dodging grappling vines, blasts of elemental energy, Hawke’s unreasonably large greatsword, and the occasional arrows. Maybe Corypheus could be forgiven if he forgot to posture and pose dramatically. 

No matter how long Varric had known her and how many times he’d seen it, it never got easier watching Hawke take a beating. She’d never been a restrained fighter, putting every ounce of her strength and soul behind what she believed in, but Varric had never seen her look this savage and wild. She’d charged in to go toe to toe against a potential demigod without flinching. She shrugged off injuries that should have put her down, pushing on heedless of the dented armor pushing into her torso or the blood streaming from a cheek flayed open by Corypheus’s claws. There would be no healer coming to put her back together after this – and she knew it with every breath she took – but that never slowed her down. Hawke spent her flesh and blood like currency, trading it away carelessly for the chance to hurt her enemy. 

And it worked. Every time Hawke’s oversized greatsword swept through his defenses, it cost Corypheus dearly, the blade biting savagely into his dessicated flesh. Hawke finally got past his guard, stepping in deliberately, dangerously close. The risk earned her a savage blow that cut her scalp open, fresh blood streaming out to mat her hair and turn it an even darker red. But she didn’t even seem to notice. Pushing past the pain, Hawke swung her sword around towards Corypheus’s torso, her blade slicing into his chest at an angle that must have shattered ribs and shredded whatever vital organs a fiend like that kept in its chest. 

Varric held his breath, waiting to see if that decisive stroke would earn her a victory. Corypheus staggered, one hand – clawed fingers still wet with Hawke’s blood – pawing weakly his chest, scrabbling at the blade as Hawke wrenched it free. Then the towering darkspawn fell, collapsing slowly to the ground. 

A ragged cheer went up from the gathered Wardens, and Varric felt himself joining in. Trust Hawke to pull off the miracle, yet again. 

His voice froze in his throat as a heart wrenching scream rose over the victory cry. 

Sunshine writhed in a corona of energy, magic sparking wildly off her in random bursts of fire, ice, and lightning. Her staff lay dropped at her feet, and she doubled over with her hands clutched to her head, screaming. As the cheers were strangled off in horror, he could make out the words in her strident wailing. 

“Get him out! It’s in my head! Maker’s mercy, get him out!” Her hands dropped from her head, pulling out strands of dark hair and twisting into claws as they convulsed. Her eyes locked onto her sister, desperate with terror and agony as she sobbed and cried out. “He’s too strong. I can’t fight it. Stop him. Stop _me_.” 

Varric watched in grief as the final fragment of Hawke’s heart finally broke. The last person she had left, the baby sister she’d resented protecting her whole life, begged her for a mercy stroke. The last shred of Hawke’s soul died in front of him, but her eyes and voice remained as hard as the steel of her blade. “She’s putting off too much energy. I can’t get close enough. Varric, I need you to take the shot.” 

His stomach clenched and he felt like he was about to vomit. “Hawke, don’t ask me to do this.” 

Hawke’s face twisted with agony as she turned to him, pleading with hard, dead eyes. “I can’t get to her. I need you to do what I can’t. Varric, please.” 

He’d never heard her so desperate, admitting weakness and helplessness in a crisis. This was Hawke asking. Hawke begging. What else could he do but answer? 

He raised Bianca, lining up Sunshine in his sights. Beautiful, sweet, strong Sunshine. She’d collapsed to her knees. Her face was pale with agony, lips drawn back in a rictus. The corded tendons stood out on her neck as she arched her head back, elemental magic pouring out of her in waves. She fought with every ounce of her being, staving off the inevitable as she clawed for every heartbeat and ragged breath. Fighting to give Hawke time to pull off another miracle. 

Varric’s hand shook, Bianca’s sights wavering. He could barely force the words out in a broken whisper. “Hawke, don’t ask me to do this. I can’t kill your baby sister.” 

As he struggled to act, heart and head warring over what he knew was right, the decision was taken out of his hands. A trio of black-fletched arrows buried themselves in Sunshine’s neck and chest, red circles of blood slowly blooming around each entry point. 

“Maker forgive me, I can.” 

Varric turned to see Nathaniel, his bow still raised and jaw set. The lines of his body were tensed, so tightly controlled he might snap, and his dark eyes blazed with pain. But every arrow had been perfectly placed for a clean, certain kill. 

Gaze still fixed on his lover as she slumped the rest of the way to lie prone on the ground, the Warden-Commander called orders to his troops. “Wardens, fall back! Everyone out of range. Corypheus moves hosts like an archdemon, and any Taint may be enough. Get clear, and your priority targets are fallen brethren.” 

Varric couldn’t imagine what it cost him to give that order, what it had cost him to take that shot, but his voice and his bow never wavered. 

Another shriek drew everyone’s attention to Corypheus’s next host, a blond Dalish woman, one of the Warden officers. Nathaniel trained his bow on her, ready to kill another person who had trusted his leadership to keep her safe. 

Before he could take the shot, Varric intervened. “I’ve got this one. Get your people clear so we don’t have to keep doing this.” 

Nathaniel nodded, sharp and professional, but his face held a hint of gratitude he would never voice. 

Bianca sang out, sharp and certain, and the Dalish woman dropped to the ground, crackling lightning dwindling to sparks. 

That was the last clear image he had before the skirmish became a rout. Varric watched with horror as the Grey Wardens fled in panic. Screams and writhing erupted seemingly at random as Corypheus’s spirit hopped from body to body, seizing control of anyone in a Warden uniform. Nathaniel’s troops had taken his order to heart, striking down the remainder of Corypheus’s conscripted body guards. But killing them wouldn’t stop Corypheus, and soon the Wardens were cutting down their compromised comrades as fast as the enemy. Varric’s heart ached to see these legendary heroes reduced to slaughtering their own people out of mercy and terror. 

He helped where he could, putting bolts through Corypheus’s intended hosts and loyal minions alike. Hawke focused her fearsome efforts on the lyrium-twisted horrors leading the Red Templar unit that had been drawn to the fighting. She moved with the same ruthless savagery they did, blood streaming from her scalp and spattering from her sword to paint her face and armor as red as glowing lyrium. 

This wasn’t a battle any longer. It was a massacre. No one would find any glory in this butchery. 

Maybe it was good there would be no one left to tell this story; it wasn’t going to have much of an ending. 

\-----------

As the battle raged on around him, Cullen grew nervous at how well their plan seemed to be working. Something must be about to go terribly wrong. 

Thus far, however, it hadn’t. The Fereldan army had drawn off the bulk of the Venatori cultists and Red Templars, keeping most of the enemy forces focused on that large, obvious threat. Hawke and the Grey Wardens were pinning down Corypheus and his guards, and the sky had been clear of the dragon for a while, suggesting even that insane plan was enjoying some measure of success. With all of the major obstacles removed, Cullen’s small strike force had been given a nearly unobstructed path to the Temple complex. 

Not that they had expected the ruins of the Temple to be highly defended regardless. Wreckage rarely qualified as a strategic target, no matter how important the structure had been before its destruction. 

Still, Cullen couldn’t shake the feeling that their approach had been too easy. He and the other warriors in their small group had taken point, cutting a path through the fringes of the combat, the rest of the strike force on their heels. The mages – Dorian, Solas, and Avernus – conserverd their mana for the taxing process of opening the rift. With them unable to defense themselves using magic, ensuring their safety fell to their small guard force: Cassandra, a Grey Warden called Blackwall, and Cullen himself. Sulevin rounded out their company, her precise archery nearly as essential as her intended role as Herald. 

They had almost made it. The Temple entrance loomed ahead, jagged fragments of rock where an elegant archway once stood. Cassandra and Blackwall shepherded the three mages through the narrow opening. Cullen realized a moment too late that Sulevin wasn’t with them and turned back to look for her, heart sinking with the certainty that their good fortune had finally been exhausted. 

A sharp cry of pain drew his attention to the Dalish woman, one hand holding her bow and the other clutching at an arrow that jutted out from her torso, its shaft buried deep between her ribs. Cullen ran to her immediately, providing support on her uninjured side to help her move towards the cover of the Temple entryway. He tried to shield her with his armored body as they ran, for what little good that protection would do now, but their position was too exposed. He couldn’t protect her from all sides. 

“I guess they had one decent marksman after all.” Sulevin winced at Cullen’s pace, but he didn’t dare slow down and leave her in the open, vulnerable to being struck again. “Or someone got a lucky shot.” 

As soon as they reached the archway and took cover behind solid stone, Cullen tried to get a closer look at her injury. There was little to see beyond the shaft emerging from her body; the arrow had lodged deeply into her flesh. 

She pulled away protectively as his fingers brushed the arrow shaft, hissing with pain at her own sudden movement. “Don’t touch it. You’ll only make it worse.” 

“Maker’s blood… how could it get any worse?” 

Her huff of laughter choked off into a whimpering gasp. “Just don’t try to move it or, Creators forbid, take it out.” She grimaced, trying to conceal her pain. “It’s lungstuck. I won’t have long regardless, but I’d rather not bleed out any faster.” 

The world froze around them, Cullen’s mind shouting denials. It wasn’t possible for her to be so badly injured, dying from a chance hit when they were so close to their goal. 

Sulevin coughed weakly, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, and the flecks of blood that emerged, dark red against her bronze skin, shook him from his momentary paralysis. 

Cullen stood, reaching to help her to her feet. “Come on. I’ll get you to the portal. There were healers at the Conclave.” 

She shook her head. “I won’t make it that long. I’m not going to the Conclave.” She took hold of his outstretched hand, gripping it tightly but making no move to rise from her pained crouch. “I need you to go in my place.” 

Startled, Cullen recoiled. He would have pulled away, but her grip on his hand held him fast. He shook his head in denial. “You know I can’t. You saw how the Mark reacts to a lyrium addict.” 

Sulevin’s shoulders shook with a weak cough, and Cullen leaned down to hear her as she struggled to speak. “I was there, at the Conclave. Observing.” Her too-red lips curled into a brief, wry grin and Cullen felt his own soften into a faint answering smile despite the pain in his chest as he watched her fight for breath. Her grip on his hand tightened convulsively, and her dark eyes bored into him with the intensity of her gaze. “Find me. You know me. You can convince me to take the Mark.” 

“No, we can fix this. We’ll find another way. I’m not leaving you here like this.” 

“You have to.” Her eyes as much as her words stopped his protests. “Go back. Find me. Change the past. Then none of this happens.” She swallowed, taking a quick, shallow breath as something in her expression softened, becoming hopeful, wistful. “But maybe we will.” 

Maker’s breath… so he hadn’t been imagining this thing between them; she had felt it, too. It seemed only too fitting with the horrible irony of his life that he shouldn’t find out until she was being taken from him. 

Tenderly, he raised her knuckles to his lips, offering what scant comfort he could give her. “I won’t fail you. I swear it.” 

“I know you won’t.” She responded with a soft smile, warm despite the pain clouding her eyes. Gently pulling her hand free from his, she brushed her fingers over his cheek in one lingering caress before gripping her bow and struggling to her feet. “Go. I’ll hold them off as long as my arrows last.” 

\--------

Cullen ran down the twisted passageway into the Temple complex, moving as quickly as he could manage in heavy armor. A part of his mind screamed the he couldn’t leave Sulevin behind to die, but he tamped down on those thoughts. He couldn’t let himself be distracted from what needed to be done. She was buying him time with her life, and he would be damned if he’d waste a second of it. 

Blackened, twisted remains flashed by the corners of his vision as he ran, the distorted corpses of those who had died in the Conclave explosion. He remembered a time, not so long ago, when the destruction at the Conclave had seemed an unimaginable horror. It barely fazed him now. Charred, contorted corpses paled in comparison to the things he’d seen since. 

At the end of the passageway, Cullen caught up to Cassandra and Blackwall. They’d chosen a good choke point, the last door before the ritual site, its portal further narrowed by debris. The opening could easily be filled by two warriors abreast; they could hold this position against an army. And Cullen trusted they would, if necessary. 

“Lavellan?” Cassandra’s eyes held hope, but the glow of it dimmed when he shook his head. 

“No. But she’ll buy us time.” 

“What about the ritual?” Blackwall, ever practical, focused on the mission rather than the personal cost. 

“I’m going in her place.” 

Cassandra frowned, no doubt ready to point out the impossibilities, all of the objections he’d raised to Sulevin. 

Cullen headed her off, unwilling to waste the time defending an argument he’d already lost. “We can’t afford a debate. You must trust that I know what I’m doing.” 

“I… Of course.” Cassandra’s expression still held doubt, but she nodded grimly. “We’ll hold here long enough for the spell to be completed.” 

Sounds of pursuit echoed down the tunnel Cullen had come from, clanks of armored boots impacting the stone floor. He tried not to think about what it meant that they had gotten past Sulevin’s position to come after him. 

He had to keep moving. Slipping through the doorway, he clapped Blackwall on the shoulder and exchanged brief salutes with Cassandra. Then he was running again, heading further into the Temple to the site the mages had chosen for their ritual. 

When Cullen rounded the corner to the ritual location, he caught sight of the three mages, clustered together like a trio of apostate hedge witches in the fairy stories that gave his little sister nightmares as a girl. A flickering green glow hung in the air between the three of them, a faint echo of the Breach overhead, its phosphorescence casting them in an eerie light. Intent upon their casting, none of the mages responded to his approach until he drew almost close enough to touch them. “Is it ready?” 

Dorian started at Cullen’s words, alarmed by his proximity. “Keep back, man. It’s almost live.” 

“Good. We don’t have much time.” He met the mage’s frown with a firm stare. “There’s been a change of plans. You’re sending me through the rift.” 

“That serves no purpose.” Solas shook his head, not looking away from his spellwork. “You would fare little better than Ser Hugh.” 

Cullen cut him off, impatient. “We don’t have anyone else to send. I’ll arrange for someone else – not a Templar – to receive the Mark. I won’t let our sacrifices be for nothing.” 

Dorian regarded him thoughtfully for a moment before nodding acceptance. “Maker guide you.” 

Avernus, who had remained silently focused on the ritual, spoke at last, his voice tense with strain. “Be ready.” 

With no more warning, the air tore open like a curtain. A gaping rift hung in the space between the mages, its edges flickering and rippling like no rift Cullen had seen before. It seemed to suck the air from the room, a tangible pull that drew him forward. 

No time for hesitation. Everything they had done gained them this one chance. He wouldn’t let it be wasted. 

Gathering his nerve, Cullen squared himself to the rift and leapt. 

\---------

Cullen staggered as he landed, impacting the ground sooner than he expected. For a moment, he thought the spell had failed, that he had gone nowhere – nowhen. His surroundings hadn’t changed. He stood in a room identical to the place he had left from, except that it bore no signs of damage or destruction and was lit by the warm glow of fire rather than eerie green Fade light. It also had a decided lack of mages engaged in experimental spellcraft. 

The spell had worked. It had taken him back to the Conclave, before the explosion that killed the Divine and tore open the sky. Cullen had one chance to set things on a different path. 

Through careful eavesdropping, Cullen confirmed that the spell had taken him back to a time scant hours before the explosion. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if he could somehow prevent the disaster and save the Divine, changing the future even more dramatically than they’d planned. But that way lay madness. There would be too many risks, too many unknowns. Even if Cullen could find a way to stop Corypheus today, the would-be god would never give up. He would strike again at a time they weren’t expecting, and Cullen would be powerless to help. No, he had to work with what he knew, not gamble away the only opportunity he would have to stop Corypheus before he destroyed the world. 

Cullen needed to stick to the plan, which meant finding Ser Hugh to prevent one Herald from being chosen, then finding Sulevin to raise another in his place. 

Many of the Templars attending the Conclave knew him from his time at Kirkwall or Kinloch. Even the ones who were aware Cullen had formally left the order still trusted him. At least enough to discuss guard schedules and posting. They confirmed Ser Hugh’s recollections that he had been assigned to stand guard near the Divine in the hours leading up to the Conclave. When Cullen found his posting, Ser Hugh readily accepted the story about Cullen having come to relieve him, and Cullen felt a weight lift from his shoulders as the young man stood down. Whatever else happened from here, he could stop being haunted by watching his friend’s agonizing, slow death. 

The bigger part of his work here remained unfinished. Rather than dismissing Hugh, he sent the young Templar on another assignment. “Scan the Western perimeter. You’re looking for a Dalish hunter, a lone woman. She’s not a threat, although she’s likely a spy, deny it as she may.” He smiled in spite of himself, both amused and saddened by the joke no one else could share. 

Hugh’s brows drew downward. “You want her apprehended, ser?” 

“No, nothing like that. I need to speak with her, but not by force.” He frowned, considering how to convince Sulevin to speak with a shemlen stranger, and a military one at that. “When you find her, tell her that Andraste calls her to walk Andruil’s path to this place.” 

“As you say, ser.” Hugh hadn’t yet learned to conceal his skepticism in the face of nonsensical orders. 

Cullen forced a confident smile. “She’ll come.” 

Maker’s breath, he hoped she would come. 

If nothing else, his cryptic message should catch Sulevin’s attention. He’d come to understand that her personal faith – reverence for both Dalish gods and Andraste, although as liberator rather than prophet – was unique among the Dalish, not something others even within her clan fully accepted. She should want answers about how a shemlen, of all people, understood her unorthodox beliefs. Maker willing, that curiosity would be enough to bring her to this place at the right time. Cullen didn’t know what more he could do beyond trusting the faith Sulevin had placed in his ability to persuade her. 

After Ser Hugh left, Cullen began second-guessing his decisions. Should he have sought out Sulevin himself rather than sending a messenger on such a critical errand? Worse, by sending someone to bring Sulevin here, he had effectively trapped himself in place until she came. He couldn’t afford to leave lest he missed her. Waiting frayed at his nerves. With every second, he found more potential for disaster. Unable to stand still, Cullen eventually took to pacing, stalking restlessly through the areas of the Temple near his assumed guard post. 

He carefully avoided the areas of the Temple complex that were most familiar, the places he had spent time in before. He couldn’t risk running into his past self. Any explanations he offered for his duplicate presence would sound mad. Demonic impersonation sounded far more plausible than travel from the future. Cullen himself – his other self – would likely lead the charge if he encountered someone – some _thing_ – wearing his face. He had too much to do, in both times and places, to risk provoking that confrontation. So he stayed well away from anywhere he might encounter his duplicate. 

As he passed by a partway open door, his steps were drawn up short by a familiar voice, one he had feared he would never hear again. “What’s going on here?” 

Sulevin. She had come. 

The angry, echoing roar that followed could only have come from Corypheus. It took all of Cullen’s willpower not to charge into the room and confront the architect of so much tragedy and disaster. But this wasn’t the moment. He had done what was asked of him, and now he must have faith in Andraste and her Herald to do the rest. 

Corypheus’s fury rose. Sulevin had stolen his magic. She had become the Herald. Cullen’s mission had succeeded. He had given her a future. Given all of them a future. 

Cullen exhaled a sigh and a prayer of gratitude. He closed his eyes as the Temple exploded in searing green light.


	6. Epilogue

Sulevin woke, groggy and disoriented, kneeling on a hard floor. Pain. Running. A woman? She could only grasp flashes of memory like lightning, gone before she saw enough to understand. 

A sharp pain in her hand focused her awareness. Looking down, she saw iron shackles on her wrists. She’d been taken captive. By whom? For what purpose? Her scattered thoughts fled, offering no answers. 

Turning her hand over, Sulevin looked for the source of the pain. Blazing green light erupted from her palm, accompanied by a jolt of agony like nothing she had ever felt before. Creators, what had been done to her? 

A door opened, revealing armored shemlen. Refusing to show weakness despite her vulnerable position, she stared down the dark-haired woman who appeared to be in charge. Even if they intended to kill her, as the human warrior threatened, she would get answers first. Answers about the light seeping from her palm, about her imprisonment, about her missing memories. 

As the shemlen spoke, Sulevin quickly realized that they had no idea what had happened either. It would have to be up to her to find her own answers, then. For all of them.


End file.
